


Roomfriends and Other Oxymorons

by dust_and_gold



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Bellamy Blake is a History & Mythology Nerd, Bellamy Has Feelings, Bisexual Disaster Clarke, F/M, Hate to Love, Love/Hate, More angst than a Harry Potter Puppet Pal, Mutual Pining, Nerd Bellamy Blake, Roommates, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Unresolved Sexual Tension, What are these feelings and why, and they were ROOMMATES, grad students
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-05-27 07:03:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15019253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dust_and_gold/pseuds/dust_and_gold
Summary: Clarke and Bellamy are two people who, though they share the same best friend, don’t like each other at all—at least, until they start to like each other a little too much.“And they were roommates” AU.**He’d remembered learning in Bio once about major histocompatibility complex, which had something to do with a person’s unique scent, and how some scientists thought that the more different a person’s histocompatibility was from yours, the more likely you were to be attracted to them. On a base, instinctive level. By scent. By sight. By sheer proximity.Bellamy wasn’t great at science, so he didn’t actually know what the fuck that meant. But whatever his histocompatibility something-or-other was, it had gone fucking haywire when Clarke Griffin had walked into the room. Blonde hair, upturned lips, blue eyes, dimpled chin, soft figure, hard gaze. She smelled delicately flowery, but she looked like she could kill you. She was a wrecking ball to the solar plexus. And he absolutely did not have the strength for it.She’d KO’d him in one look.





	1. Major Histocompatibility Complex

Raven and Bellamy had been best friends since the beginning. They'd grown up in the same hard neighborhood, had suffered through the same childhood, and understood each other like nobody else.

Raven and Clarke had been best friends since the day they moved into the same freshman dorm and bonded over being smart women too good for the men who’d never understand them.

Clarke and Bellamy had been worst friends since the moment they'd realized they were trapped in a Venn diagram of friendship with only Raven overlapping. And now that the three of them were sharing a house, things were only going to get worse.

Way, way worse.

 

#

“Need help with that box of books?” Raven asked as she held the front door open for Clarke.

“Nope,” Clarke panted, even though she really did. But Raven’s own arms were full—Raven trusted only herself to move the tech—so Clarke knew Raven wasn’t offering to assist Clarke herself. Raven was asking in the hopes that _Bellamy_ would be the one to gallantly leap out of the moving truck and volunteer to shoulder Clarke’s load. But Clarke would rather stack three more boxes of books on top of this one then let that happen. No way would she ever let Bellamy Blake come to her rescue.

“So stubborn,” Raven muttered as Clarke stepped past her.

“Like he’d help me anyway,” Clarke said.

She squeezed down the front hall into their living room and set the monstrously heavy box down with a sigh of relief. Rolling her shoulders, she looked around the empty room and smiled. Her own house. Her _first_ house, a total blank canvas ripe with possibilities. It had hardwood floors, plenty of light, and three whole bedrooms. Only one bathroom, but she could live with that. There were even marble countertops in the kitchen, and not the ugly, splotchy green kind, but cool grey and white Carrera. Her mom would definitely approve of that.  It wasn’t a large house by any means, but it was nice, and it was hers.

“Move,” grunted a voice behind her.

Clarke sighed. _And his._

“You forgot a _please_ in there,” she said, stepping aside so Bellamy could set down a bookcase. A _whole_ bookcase, good lord. His biceps strained distractingly.

“No. I didn’t.”

He turned around, and she rolled her eyes at the back of his head.

“You two are children,” said Raven, sounding amused as she entered.

“I can’t help it,” Clarke said grumpily. “He’s just so—"

“You can too help it, but it’s fine. Get it all out of your system on moving day.”

It took them the rest of the afternoon to get all their belongings into the house. All three of them had maddening amounts of books, and Clarke was beginning to regret becoming housemates with people who were even bigger nerds than she was. The sun beat down unforgivingly. Sweat dripped between Clarke’s shoulder blades and ringed her hairline. Raven’s leg started acting up, and both Clarke and Bellamy ordered her to take a break. Getting her to agree was almost as difficult as fitting the couch through the doorway, which took twenty minutes and brought actual tears of frustration to Clarke’s eyes.

Clarke and Bellamy carried the rest of the furniture in together, in resentful silence and with annoyingly good teamwork, while Raven smirked.

“Why do you have so much cooking stuff?” Bellamy’s voice was rough with exhaustion as he set down the last of Clarke’s meticulously labeled boxes. It was color coded blue for _kitchen_.

Clarke just looked at him. “For cooking.”

“You’re twenty-three. You should have a blender, a saucepan, and a Chinese takeout menu, max.”

“Not all of us live like savages,” Clarke said in a clipped voice.

“Clarke is a frighteningly adult adult,” Raven said with a laugh. “Abby probably bought most of that. Holy shit, is that a _food_ processor? Doesn’t she know we’re grad students with no time to reenact _Chopped_ every night?”

Bellamy’s expression twisted, and Clarke looked away. She knew Bellamy thought she was just a spoiled princess, and she hated when he was right.

The two of them had never gotten along, not since the day they’d met, back when she and Raven were newly minted freshman roommates. Bellamy had driven up to visit Raven for a weekend, and Raven had excitedly introduced Clarke to her lifelong best friend. Clarke had to admit she’d been more than a little impressed by him. A person’s first glimpse of Bellamy Blake, with those broad shoulders, golden, freckled skin, tousled curls, and dark, intense eyes, was a pretty momentous occasion, after all. Clarke’s heart had even stopped a little.

 But Bellamy had taken one look at Clarke, up and down…and then looked promptly away from her, as if she was of no importance. He hadn’t even said hello. And he didn’t look at her again.

It had gone downhill from there.

 They were too different. He was reckless, she was uptight. He was abrasive, she was bossy. He was irresponsible, and cocky, and charismatic, and she was judgmental, and earnest, and stressed.

But they did have one thing in common—the most important thing. _Raven Reyes_. The linchpin of the threesome, their respective favorite person, and the only reason Clarke hadn’t yet given Bellamy Blake the dressing down he _so_ deserved.

At long last the moving truck was empty, and their house was overflowing with boxes.

“We actually finished,” said Bellamy, looking around them with wonder.

Clarke rolled her shoulders and winced. Thank god she had a mattress to sleep on, even if she didn’t have a bedframe yet. Her whole back was in knots.

“Seriously?” Raven asked. “We’re officially moved in? Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“ _Awesome_. Then it’s time.” Raven heaved herself off the couch, stretching to her full height, and pointed. “You two. Listen up.”

Bellamy and Clarke’s eyes caught in a rare moment of solidarity.

“I’ve tolerated the Hot and Cold War that’s waged between you these last four years,” said Raven. “It’s even been kind of amusing now and then. But it all stops now. I mean it. We’re confined to a small space, we’ve signed a lease, and you two need to find a way to get along. You’re both idiots, but you’re _my_ idiots. And this _will_ work. Got it?”

Bellamy and Clarke looked at each other again, but this time their shared glance was a wary one, like apex predators sizing up their rivals.

It really, _really_ annoyed her that he was hot.

“ _Got it?_ ” said Raven. “You can do this. You’re adults now.”

“One of us is,” said Clarke.

Bellamy huffed. “That lasted long.”

Raven banged a fist against her forehead.

But Clarke couldn’t help it. She _had_ to get the last word. Sometimes she felt like her very life was at stake if she let Bellamy win a single point, especially since he’d won that very first one.

“Of course I’m dedicated to making this work,” Clarke said primly, and she saw Bellamy roll his eyes. “We’ll come up with some solid house rules, chore schedules, that sort of—”

“You’re not serious,” Bellamy said with a laugh. “Wait. Who am I kidding. The princess is always serious.”

Clarke’s mouth opened furiously, but suddenly Raven’s hands were closing around each of their arms, and she was yanking them together so hard that Clarke bounced off Bellamy’s very solid chest. He was such a present person. She’d never met anyone with that much physicality. She was hit with a whiff of him—of sweat and musk and _Bellamy_ —and Clarke tried very hard to back up, but Raven’s grip was viselike.

“We’ll come up with house rules, I promise,” Raven said. “ _Yes_ , Bellamy, rules. And _no,_ Clarke, we will not have a color-coded chore wheel and a spreadsheet calendar in thirty-minute increments or whatever you’ve got planned. This is going to be _fun_ , us living together. I demand it. So make a truce _now_ and stick with it.”

Clarke and Bellamy’s gazes met. He was right above her, so close she saw the muscle in his jaw clench.

Clarke stuck out her hand. “Truce?”

There was a pause, and then Bellamy took her hand. “Truce.”

His hand was startling. It was so much larger and rougher than she was expecting; she almost jerked free of him at the scrape of his calluses. How had he gotten those? He was a bookworm like her, a grad student in _mythology_ , for god’s sake, but he had the palms of a ranch hand. Not that Clarke knew any ranch hands.

His skin was very warm.

They shook once and let go of each other very quickly. Raven looked pleased.

“I’m going to start setting up my room,” Clarke said, and hurried toward her bedroom. She peeked back at Bellamy as she shut the door and saw him looking at the hand she’d held with a strange, almost confused look on his face.

 

#

Bellamy stared at the calendar taped to the fridge in disbelief.

He’d known what he was getting into, moving in with Clarke Griffin. The girl liked order. But Bellamy had figured she wouldn’t be presumptuous—or stupid—enough to try and impose her order on _him_.

But apparently she was. Because she’d scheduled him for _Bathroom: toilet + sink +mirror_ for every Saturday for the rest of his life.

“If she thinks I’m cleaning the toilet on a fucking _Saturday_ ,” Bellamy said, “she’s got a big storm comin’.”

Raven, sitting at the kitchen counter, didn’t even look up from her computer. “You are so dramatic.”

“I’m not spending my weekends elbow deep in plumbing. Plus I’m busy Saturdays.”

“Then tell her, not me,” Raven said vaguely. “I’m busy _now_ , if you haven’t noticed.”

Bellamy glanced at Clarke’s closed bedroom door and grimaced. He could hear music playing quietly inside.

He really, really didn’t want to interrupt whatever mysterious things Clarke did when she was alone. Not even if he was a little bit curious. He’d probably accomplish nothing but pissing her off.

But they hadn’t even made the forty-eight-hour mark of living here. It was way too early for a _laminated_ chore chart.

He knocked on her door.

“I’m busy,” came her voice.

“We need to talk about the damn chart.”

The music switched off at once. After a short silence, the door was yanked open only a few inches. The small bit of Clarke he could see was definitely not pleased to see him back.

Her blue eyes narrowed. “There is nothing wrong with the damn chart.”

“Yes, there is. You can’t just decide these things on your own, Clarke. You’re not in charge here.”

“Was anyone _else_ going to make it?”

“Of course not—”

“Then yes, I had to make one. How would you suggest we keep this house running, Bellamy?”

Her condescending tone made his hackles rise. “Like normal people! Clean it when it gets dirty, don’t worry about it until then.”

“And live in _chaos?_ ” Clarke snorted. “I don’t think so. The chart will work.”

“Fine,” Bellamy snapped. “The chart will work. But you have to discuss this shit with us first! You’ve scheduled me on days when I don’t have time to clean an entire room of the house. You fucking laminated the thing already. We need to compromise.”

Some of the coolness faded from her gaze. “I…I guess I see where you’re coming from.”

“Miracle,” Bellamy muttered.

She opened the door a little wider, and Bellamy got a better look at her. She was in very tight black yoga pants, a loose tank top, and a sports bra. Her blond hair was spilling loose of its ponytail, and curling wisps fell around her face.

Bellamy took a hasty step backward.

“I guess I jumped the gun,” Clarke said wearily. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Tell me what you don’t like about the chart and I’ll draw up another one.”

“You don’t have to do everything yourself.”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his, and she frowned, like she couldn’t tell if he was being nice or making a dig. He honestly didn’t know either.

“House meetings,” Bellamy said. “How about that? The three of us pick a day for monthly—”

“Weekly—”

“ _Biweekly_ house meetings,” Bellamy said, raising his eyebrows.

Clarke’s lips pursed, but she conceded the point.

“We have biweekly meetings where we go over our calendars and whatever other shit you’ll no doubt have on the docket,” Bellamy said, unable to keep back a smirk. “Knowing you you’ll have a full power point presentation prepared. We can finalize the chore chart then.”

Clarke looked like she was searching furiously for holes in this plan, and he grinned in satisfaction when she huffed a sigh. “Fine. Monday nights?”

“Monday nights it is.”

They stared at each other for several seconds longer.

“Right,” Clarke said, somewhat awkwardly. “I’m going to—get back to—”

“Right,” said Bellamy quickly. “Plotting world domination, or whatever it is you do.”

The faintest smile brushed her lips. “Ha, ha.”

She closed the door, and Bellamy let out his breath. He felt suddenly very tired, as if that conversation had taken a lot more effort than he’d realized.

 

#

Bellamy vividly recalled the moment he and Clarke Griffin had met. He’d driven four hours upstate to Raven’s campus. It had been the very day after he and Echo had broken up (the second time) and a month since Octavia’s arrest. He was nothing but knives and debris inside, a strange mix of extremely vulnerable and covered in armor. He'd needed a weekend to take his mind off things. A weekend of quiet time with his best friend.

And then _she’d_ walked in. And she was like…a weapon.

He’d remembered learning in Bio once about _major histocompatibility complex_ , which had something to do with a person’s unique scent, and how some scientists thought that the more different a person’s histocompatibility was from yours, the more likely you were to be attracted to them. On a base, instinctive level. By scent. By sight. By sheer proximity.

Bellamy wasn’t great at science, so he didn’t actually know what the fuck that meant. But whatever his histocompatibility something-or-other was, it had gone _fucking haywire_ when Clarke Griffin had walked into the room. Blonde hair, upturned lips, blue eyes, dimpled chin, soft figure, hard gaze. She smelled delicately flowery, but she looked like she could kill you. She was a wrecking ball to the solar plexus. And he absolutely did not have the strength for it.

She’d KO’d him in one look.

He’d glanced away from her at once. He was just trying to have one god damn quiet weekend with his best friend. One weekend of peace after a week of hell. Raven was not supposed to end up with an atomic fucking bomb of a roommate.

Over the next two days he learned that Clarke was cold, businesslike, and bossy, which had managed to chill out that instinctive histocompatibility reaction real quick. But he’d been wrongfooted by her since day one, and even four years later, he’d never managed to get himself on even ground.

And now they were living together. Separated by one wall. One wall and a sports bra.

It was bound to fall to shit.


	2. Thank You For Your Service

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of pining, coffee, abs, and unspoken things.

Sharing a confined space with Bellamy Blake was…interesting.

The following three days were a kind of experiment. Their first semester of grad school didn’t start until next week, and Clarke was glad to have this interim period in which to test the waters. She desperately needed to adjust to all the _interesting-ness._

His protein powders cluttered the pantry. He hung his boxers to dry atop the shower curtain, which made _no sense_ to Clarke, because a) the bathroom was _wet_ and b) they had a dryer. But when she pointed this out to him, he got all clench-jawed and told her he’d never had a dryer before, and old habits were hard to kick. And then she’d felt like a total jerk. And worst of all, like a princess.

But most of all, he was always _there._ She heard his music trickling out from under his bedroom door. He was a very physical presence at the other end of the couch while she watched the nightly news. They bumped hips in the hallway as she exited the shower and he entered. She made sure to wrap herself in the extra-large towel so she was as well covered as possible. She found his reading glasses in the kitchen and his sweaters hanging by the front door. So many signs of Bellamy life that she’d never thought of and hadn’t prepared for.

They were keeping the truce for Raven’s sake. Or at least, no one had stabbed anyone else with a fork, so in Clarke’s mind, things were going well.

Raven was the first one on Clarke’s chore chart to pull grocery duty. Clarke realized at once that this was a mistake when a cheerful Raven returned from the store with only two bags loaded with chips, salsa, soda, mini donuts, bagel bites, easy mac, and, god help her, more protein powder.

“Is this it?” said Clarke diplomatically as she helped the others unload. Bellamy shot her a warning look, assuming (rightly) that Clarke was judging, but Raven just laughed and said, “Of course not, there’s another bag in the car.”

“Oh,” said Clarke. She wouldn’t nag. She _wouldn’t_. Bellamy had told her she wasn’t in charge here, and she _wasn’t_ , but also…Clarke opened her mouth. “But did—”

 Bellamy cleared his throat.

Clarke dropped it.

But the next morning, Clarke learned the hard way that she definitely should have nagged.

She’d finally unpacked the coffee machine after four straight days of morning runs to Starbucks. But on the fifth day she had a heinously early meeting with her advisor and didn’t want to make the trip, so she’d finally unearthed the shiny chrome coffee maker her mother had bought and set about searching the cabinets for beans.

She hadn’t yet implemented a system of organization in the kitchen. Both Bellamy and Raven were _indecently_ messy, so it was going to be a tough sell, and she knew she had to ease them into it slowly. But still, she should have found coffee beans already.

No beans.

Clarke reached to the back of every shelf to no avail. She opened all the drawers. She checked the fridge, the freezer, even under the sink, knocking pans and pots and dishes out of her way, starting to feel desperate. She had to leave the house in ten minutes. She hadn’t budgeted time for Starbucks. Was she really going to have to meet her advisor without _coffee?_ No. It was unfathomable.

“ _Where is it?_ ” she muttered.

“Could you make any more of a racket?” said a deep voice right behind her.

Clarke gasped and whirled around, nearly dropping a can of chocolate protein powder. (Who had invented such an ungodly thing?)

Bellamy was standing in the kitchen doorway looking thoroughly annoyed.

And thoroughly shirtless.

Clarke felt herself get very red, like she had never seen a mostly naked person before. That was just— _what. What?_ Where was his shirt? Where was the coffee?

Bellamy Blake shirtless was just an assault, truth be told. He looked absolutely ridiculous in their mundane kitchen. His Renaissance statue abs could not exist in the same world as their Ikea breakfast table. Had someone _drawn_ those abs on? And pecs? And all those other muscles for which she knew no decent names?

She had a sudden, grudging admiration for all those protein powders, and looked down at the can in her hand. _Thank you for your service._

Oh, for God’s sake. She was being utterly ridiculous.

“I was looking for coffee,” Clarke said, and was glad her voice sounded normal.

“There’s no coffee.”

“There’s— _what?_ ”

Bellamy may have looked like a Greek God, but it was definitely a very grumpy one. His curls were rumpled with bedhead, and when he crossed his arms, his biceps did things Clarke would absolutely make illegal if she could. Not that she was, you know, looking.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” he said.

“Yes, I do. It’s five minutes before I need to be in the car and I haven’t had coffee.”

“It’s six thirty in the morning.”

“Which is a perfectly respectable time to be up and about,” Clarke said shortly, still feeling rather faint and very angry at the same time. “It’s not my fault you didn’t get home until the crack of dawn.”

“Well, bartending shifts tend to end pretty late.”

Clarke straightened up. “ _Bartending_?”

“Yep.”

Her stomach clenched. “You stand behind the counter and pour people _drinks?_ ”

“That is what a bartender does, yeah.”

Suddenly she wanted to throw the protein powder right at those washboard abs, or maybe at that one muscle that angled down across his hip, disappearing beneath the waistband of his sweatpants. Where she was absolutely _not looking._

Bartending. He had to be bartending, of all things.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.

“Like what?” she said coldly.

“Like you’re contemplating ways to murder me with that protein powder and get away with it.”

Damn it.

She took in a hard breath through her nose. She was being unreasonable. Her mother always said Clarke went from zero to murder-y way too fast, and it wasn’t like Bellamy had taken that job to hurt her.

Wait. Why had he taken that job?

“What about school?” she asked.

Bellamy ran a hand through his curls, his gaze flitting away from hers. “I’m, uh, deferring until next semester. Working a few jobs in the meantime. Didn’t Raven say?”

Clarke felt such a strong rush of sympathy that her anger actually abated. “I…no, she didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. I’ve got to make sure O’s school is paid for before mine. She’s more important.”

He said this so matter-of-factly that she could only stare.

There was an uncomfortable silence in the too-small kitchen. Clarke shifted her weight. “So is there really no coffee here?”

“Not one molecule of coffee on the premises,” said Bellamy, smirking slightly. “But Raven did get two bags of flaming hot Cheetos.”

Clarke had often thought that Bellamy was too good-looking to trust, but she believed him. This was definitely in Raven’s MO. She’d seen her roommate blindly plow through enough junk food to get a person through the apocalypse when she was in the middle of genius-ing.

“Fabulous,” Clarke muttered. “I have to be in my advisor’s office in half an hour, and it takes ten minutes to get there, and at least ten minutes to park in that stupid structure, and then ten minutes more to walk across campus—”

Bellamy was looking at her strangely. “Okay,” he said.

Clarke stopped. “Okay what?”

“Let me throw on a shirt and I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Clarke said automatically, though her heartbeat kicked up a notch. She realized she was still holding the protein powder and set it down.

“What, put on a shirt? The baristas might mind.”

“No,” Clarke said, privately thinking the baristas would very much _not_ mind. “You don’t have to drive me.”

Bellamy scowled. “Do you think I’m not capable of doing anything nice?”

“No!” Clarke said quickly. “Of course not. I just…” She glanced at the clock and bit her lip. “Thank you. I accept. If you drive fast.”

“We’ll hit the Starbucks drive-thru,” he said as he ducked out of the kitchen.

They were the most beautiful words in the English language.

Bellamy came back thirty seconds later with a hastily tossed on t-shirt, which was both a relief and a tragedy. Clarke had never been in Bellamy’s Rover, which was so large that her brain immediately made a quip about it compensating for something. But there was no point shattering this weird civility between them, so she said nothing as Bellamy put the Rover in gear and pulled out of the driveway.

 

#

 

Bellamy drummed his fingers against the steering wheel and slid another sideways look at Clarke. She was sitting in his passenger seat, looking prim and princess-like with her blonde hair damp at the ends and smelling like that fresh, pink, summery grapefruit stuff she left all over the bathroom.

He hastily dragged his gaze back to the windshield.

Neither of them spoke. He noticed her every uncomfortable fidget, every shift of her feet. How could a small person take up so much space in a very large car? The entire Rover was dominated by _Clarke_. And that damn grapefruit smell was sinking into every surface. In a few more minutes he’d smell like it, too. He tried to focus. He tried like hell to think of something to say, but he came up with absolutely nothing.

They pulled up to the window of the drive-thru.

Clarke’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank God.”

Bellamy chuckled, surprising both himself and her, judging by her wide-eyed look. “Didn’t know you were such a caffeine addict.”

The warmth slid right off her face. “I’m not an addict.”

“Uh. Right.” He felt a prickle of annoyance. Did she have to make this so hard? He was trying.

He rolled down the window to give his order. “Yeah, hi. I’d like one Grande Flat White, and—?”

Clarke leaned across him, and he got such a strong whiff of summery, sunshine-y grapefruit that Bellamy actually got a little dizzy. Her hair tickled his chin, and their arms brushed. “One Venti Caramel Cocoa Cluster Frappuccino, yes to the whipped cream.”

Bellamy, who had been expecting Clarke to order six shots of blackest espresso, stared at her.

Clarke met his eyes, her expression deadpan. “I’ve had a very. Long. Day.”

Bellamy laughed.

He couldn’t help it. He kept laughing as they drove toward the university at the sound of Clarke slurping her mountain of liquid sugar through a straw. It was kind of adorable, but he’d rather drink that monstrosity himself than admit it.

“Mmm.” Clarke closed her eyes as if so overcome with bliss she had to savor the moment. “You know, Monty has this theory that you can tell everything you need to know about a person by their Starbucks order.”

“Oh, really?” Bellamy took his eyes off the road again. “So what does my Flat White say about me?

“That you’re an unbearable hipster and you should grow a beard.”

Bellamy chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to grow a beard.”

“Don’t,” said Clarke at once.

He looked at her again. She was faintly pink.

“I mean—well—you _could_ ,” she said. “But you’ve got—well—a better than average jaw. But you know that.”

Did he? Bellamy had never been complimented on his _jaw_ before. She was such a strange person. Maybe it was the artist in her, always harping on details.

He nodded toward her sugar mess. “And what about you?”

Clarke poked the straw through the dollop of whipped cream. “Well…this says I’m a very easy-going, positive person who always lets the little things go. And has never made a chore chart in her life.”

They both grinned.

Damn it, if he didn’t start actually looking at the road he was going to wrap his Rover around a tree.

Why did she have to look like that? And in his _Rover_ , too. Talk about a fantasy he never knew he’d had.

He pulled into campus, saw those old, stately buildings, and got a strangely hollow feeling in his chest. Any sacrifice was worth it to make sure Octavia got the education he deserved, and he’d bartend until he was eighty-five to make it happen…but he’d been looking forward to grad school. A hell of a lot.

Clarke seemed to know what he was thinking, because she let the silence stretch. He was grateful.

Just as he turned the Rover toward the Humanities Building, Clarke’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out at once—trust her to be the kind of person who immediately checked their messages—and a bright, soft smile flashed across her face.

“Who’s it from?” Bellamy asked.

“Finn.” She was pink again. “He wants to go out tonight.”

Bellamy felt a  twisting, almost angry feeling in his stomach that he could not identify. An edge crept into his voice. “So last minute? Some boyfriend.”

“There’s no need to be judgmental,” Clarke said. “Which I know is the pot calling the kettle black, but honestly.”

Bellamy knew he should laugh it off, but his stomach was twisting even harder. “Just because you like Finn doesn’t mean I have to.”

“I know that,” Clarke said, her mouth set and her dimpled chin jutting out.

“Good. Because I don’t.”

“Then it’s good you’re not the one dating him.”

Now the silence between them was full of knives. He pulled up to the curb.

“Thank you for the ride,” Clarke said stiffly, then swung open the door and hopped out. She shut it again with a smart snap. He watched her hurry inside, her blonde hair bouncing and probably making the whole world smell pink, and that weird feeling in the pit of his stomach intensified.

 

#

 

That night as she sat in front of her mirror getting ready for her date, Clarke tried to keep her thoughts from drifting back to that car ride with Bellamy. Unsuccessfully.

She’d had a good meeting with her advisor, knew exactly how her first semester as a grad student studying art history would go. And she was meeting Finn in exactly twenty-three minutes, and Bellamy was _wrong_ , because Finn was great. He volunteered on the weekends, and he was an outspoken pacifist, and…and, well, he liked her. And she liked him. That was what mattered.

She pulled open her closet and ran a hand through her row of dresses. She didn’t have a lot of glamorous outfits, but she did have that one...It was what her mother would have called a lethal dress. Tight, short, black, and bare.

She put it on, freshened her lipstick, and left her bedroom.

Raven wolf-whistled from the couch. “Damn. Where are you going all dressed up?”

“I’m meeting Finn for drinks.”

Someone made a scoffing sound in the kitchen.

“Something to share with the class?” Clarke said, rounding on Bellamy.

Bellamy, who’d just opened the fridge, closed it way more aggressively than was necessary without taking anything out. “Nope.”

“You clearly do.”

“Even if I say it, you won’t listen.”

“Oh, just _say it_.”

They stared each other down. Still holding eye contact, Bellamy reopened the fridge, pulled out a bottle of beer, and cracked it open. It was a total power play, and Clarke did not appreciate it.

“Finn,” he said, “sucks.”

“Ex _cuse_ me?”

“Bellamy,” said Raven, a clear warning, but Bellamy just shrugged.

“What? He does. I don’t know why you’re dating that loser.”

“Because,” Clarke began, and then realized she did not have an end to that sentence. She crossed her arms. “I don’t have to justify our relationship to you. Finn and I are perfectly happy, we’re grabbing drinks tonight, and you’ll be seeing a lot more of him, so you’d better be nice.”

Bellamy smirked. “I’m always nice.”

“HA,” Raven said.

He tugged her ponytail where it hung over the back of the couch. “Brat.”

“Brute.”

Clarke felt oddly lonely, watching them grin at each other. She could see the years of shared history between them, years she didn’t have and could never gain. She didn’t have anyone like that. Not anymore.

She fixed the clasp of her purse just to give herself something to do and straightened her shoulders, shaking back her hair. “Well, I’m off. Don’t wait up.”

She felt Bellamy watching her as she stepped out the front door.

 

#

 

“But seriously,” Bellamy said, hours later, “why is she dating him?”

It was nearly midnight, and Clarke wasn’t back yet. Not that it bothered him. He and Raven had watched four episodes of _Game of Thrones_ and gone through as many beers each. Octavia had texted to let him know she was safely in her dorm room instead of at a bar/at a club/in jail/dead in a ditch and had even sent a photo along to prove it. He had free reign to relax.

But he couldn’t shake the irritation that had itched in the back of his thoughts all night. An inconvenient, unwelcome, Clarke-shaped irritation.

That dress had exposed her whole back.

Drunk Bellamy thought idiotic things.

Raven shrugged at his question while reaching for a bag of chips. “I don’t know. He’s a guy? He’s there? He’s not secretly a serial killer? What do you care?”

“I don’t _care_ ,” said Bellamy, offended. “I just—There’s something about that guy I don’t trust.”

Raven grabbed a handful of chips for herself and offered him the bag. Sighing, Bellamy took it.

“You know nothing, Bellamy Snow,” Raven said. “And you worry too much.”

 “I worry just the right amount, thanks. I wouldn’t let Octavia within ten feet of that guy. Nor you.”

Raven snorted. “First of all, Octavia and I can date whoever we want. You’re not in charge. And secondly, like I’d _ever_ date Finn Collins. I can do way better.”

“That’s exactly my point.”

“Wait a sec.” Raven struggled to sit upright, having melted into the cushions somewhere around an episode and a half ago. Bellamy smirked. “Are you saying you put Clarke on the same level as me and Octavia? Your dumb, _must protect at all costs because I’m Bellamy “Protector” Blake and that’s what I do and I’ve probably got the shiny badge to prove it_ level?”

“I’m not responding to that.”

Raven eyed him. “Hmm.”

Bellamy tilted his head back, letting it fall against the back of the couch. “Why do I feel like you just won an argument I didn’t know we were having?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll take it.” Raven heaved herself to a stand, her ponytail swinging. “I’m going to bed. Don’t leave those chips out or Clarke will yell at you in the morning.”

“Clarke will yell at me in the morning anyway.”

“Very true. Night.” Raven waved at him and shuffled into her bedroom, yawning.

Bellamy cast a final glance at the closed front door as that dumb, weird feeling resurged in him, picked up the bag of chips, and then retreated to his own bedroom.


	3. Not-Friends Not Hanging Out in a Platonic-Enemies Kind of Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midnight milkshakes, Rover dates, and Bellamy being a big ass nerd.

It was the last weekend before their first semester of grad school began. Raven was determined to make their last Saturday night a _night_ and managed to convince a grudging Clarke to go out with her to Bellamy’s bar.

“Come onnnnn,” Raven said, tugging on Clarke’s arm. “Fun. Remember fun? We’ll get the whole group to come. You don’t have to drink. And you don’t have to talk to Bellamy,” she said, accurately reading Clarke’s expression.

Clarke gave in. So that night she and Raven took an Uber to the bar where Bellamy worked, the Dropship, and met the rest of their friends. Monty and Jasper, Raven and Clarke’s friends from undergrad, were already three sheets to the wind and trying to press Bellamy into a drunken game of darts to no avail. Clarke rolled her eyes. Monty and Jasper worshipped Bellamy. It was their greatest flaw. Clarke also saw Murphy at the end of the bar, a friend of Bellamy’s that Clarke had serious reservations about. No sign of Harper or Miller, but they were bound to show up later.

“Finn joining us?” Raven asked, sliding onto one of the stools.

“Oh. No. He had a thing tonight.”

“A thing,” Raven said.

Clarke frowned. “Yes, a thing. Don’t be all Bellamy-ish.”

“You summoned me?” said Bellamy, appearing on the other side of the bar and sliding a beer toward Raven that she hadn’t ordered.

Raven grabbed it with a grin. “I love that you know me.”

Bellamy wiped his hands on the green apron looped around his hips and looked at Clarke. “Anything for Her Highness?”

“No, thank you.” She hated that Bellamy in an apron was a rather adorable sight.

“Come on,” Raven said, pulling Clarke off her stool, “let’s play darts with Jasper and Monty. We’ll destroy them.”

And they did. Clarke was actually enjoying herself when halfway through their second game her attention was drawn back to Bellamy across the room. He was arguing with a blonde girl in wildly impractical heels who was clearly wasted.

“Oh shit,” Raven said. “That’s Bree. Bellamy used to go out with her.”

Clarke suddenly gave her a much closer inspection.

Bree shoved Bellamy’s arm, talking very heatedly about something Clarke couldn't hear. Bellamy was calm, though, his palms up in the universal sign for _I’m not engaging._

Bree whirled away from him and stormed across the bar.

“Jesus.” Raven whistled. “I wonder what that was about. They were never serious as far as I know.”

Clarke started to reply but then stopped when she saw Bree stagger perilously on her heels.

By instinct, Clarke jumped forward and yanked Bree upright to safety.

“What’s are you _doing?_ ” Bree wrenched herself free of Clarke’s grip, looking affronted.

 _Saving your life,_ thought Clarke acidly, but she didn’t say it. “Nothing. My bad.”

With a last suspicious side eye, Bree lurched back toward her friends, who were occupying a booth by the window. And who were clearly _terrible_ , because they were laughing into their own drinks and doing not a single thing to help her.

Raven got pulled back into the game with Monty and Jasper, but the fun had seeped out of it for Clarke. She left them and sank onto one of the bar stools again.

Bellamy had returned to his domain behind the counter and was watching Bree with a concerned frown Clarke thought he had no business wearing.

“Well, she’s wasted,” he said matter-of-factly, as Bree ranted to her friends with very dramatic hand gestures.

“If you don’t want her drunk, stop supplying her with alcohol,” Clarke said shortly.

Bellamy raised his brows. “You do know what my job is, don’t you? Would you rather I stopped paying rent? That’d mess up your little chore chart.”

Clarke balled her hands into fists. Another barb formed on the tip of her tongue, but once again she swallowed it. Having self-control was the worst.

She glanced at Bree and wondered what it would be like to have none at all.

Bellamy had turned away to serve a patron, and Clarke took the opportunity to escape what was bound to become another argument. She found Raven in the crowd and tapped her shoulder.

“I think I’m going to head home,” she said, trying to sound apologetic.

Raven’s eyes widened in dismay. “Clarke! But you said—” Raven caught the look on Clarke’s face. “Never mind. I’ll catch you at home.”

“Thank you.” Clarke pulled her into a hug and wondered, not for the first time, what she’d ever done to deserve Raven Reyes. She faked a smile. “Thanks for inviting me. I had a good time.”

“No, you didn’t,” Raven laughed, and Clarke smiled for real.

Suddenly there was a shout from across the bar, and Clarke whirled.

Her breath caught.

Somehow, Bree and her impractical heels had managed to climb atop the bar, where she was teetering dangerously. _Very_ dangerously.

“Come on, Bree,” said Bellamy in an amazingly calm voice. He stood behind her, his hands held out in warning. “Let me help you down before you fall.”

He reached for her, but Bree said “ _No thank you_!” and lunged away. There was a gasp as she swayed like a Weeble but managed to reclaim her center of gravity at the very last second.

“Well, at least she was polite,” Raven said, but her expression was stony.

“DO something!” one of Bree’s friends shrieked.

Clarke’s heart pounded, and there was a tight, sick, awful feeling in her stomach. But she made herself move through the crowd and slipped behind the bar until she was right next to Bellamy. Their arms brushed.

“Bree,” Clarke said, in her most soothing _trust-me_ voice. “What did Bellamy do?”

He threw her an offended look, but Clarke didn’t take her eyes from Bree.

“ _Everything!’_ ” She jabbed a finger at him accusingly, which was not a good thing, as it sent her wildly off balance again. Everyone gasped as she swung onto one foot, but she managed to right herself just in time. “All men are dogs.”

“They _are_ ,” Clarke said.  “I very much agree with you.”

She heard Bellamy mutter something under his breath.

“Why are you agreeing with me?” Bree said. “You don’t even know me.”

Clarke had a headache.

“Bree, you left me for another guy,” Bellamy said, and Clarke shot him a _you’re not helping_ look. “Remember? Please let me help you down so I can take you home.”

“I’m not going home with _you!_ ” She looked back at Clarke and squinted a little, like she’d forgotten who Clarke was. “Men are dogs,” Bree told her again.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself. ” Clarke took a step closer.

“I should start dating women.”

Clarke smiled, unable to help it. “You should. I highly recommend it. But you know what you need even more? Someone to talk to. You can tell me all the awful things Bellamy has ever done. That happens to be one of my favorite topics of conversation.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bellamy said under his breath, and Clarke elbowed him.

“Well get _ready_ ,” Bree said. “Because there are a _bunch_.”

“I’ll bet,” said Clarke gently. “Here. Let me help you.”

Clarke held out her hand, and Bree stared at it.

Everyone in the room watched them breathlessly, but Clarke kept her gaze locked on Bree’s.

And then Bree put her hand in Clarke’s.

“Okay,” Bree said. “But I think I might have to puke just a little bit first.”

Bellamy immediately moved forward to help, and the whole room breathed a collective sigh of relief as Bree’s heels returned to earth, except for Murphy, who very audibly grumbled above the music, “What a letdown.”

 

#

 

Somehow Clarke ended up in the passenger seat of Bellamy’s Rover with Bree draped over her lap like a prize won in battle. Bree mumbled drunkenly the whole time about things Clarke was sure she’d _never_ want her to know about, like intimate details about her sex life that made both Clarke and Bellamy blush and stare out the window with absolute concentration. Eventually Bree passed out with her head on Clarke’s shoulder, to Clarke’s utmost relief. She’d never liked drunk mutterings anyway, no matter what they were about. They made her stomach clench.

Bellamy pulled up in front of a two-apartment house on a quiet, well-lit street. Without a word he took Bree’s snoring form in his arms and carried her up the driveway.

Clarke got out too, stepping down into an amazingly warm night and shutting the door. The humidity that had felt oppressive during the day had softened, slipping over her bare shoulders like a shawl. It was gloriously silent here at the edge of town, with no rumble of traffic or buzz of streetlights. Just the music of insects and a whisper of wind in the grass. Clarke tilted her head up and saw a ghostly swipe of stars and a crescent moon.

She wasn’t homesick for the city lights she'd grown up in. Not the slightest bit.

And that made her feel guilty.

Clarke watched as Bellamy, carrying Bree very carefully, rang the doorbell with his elbow. A yawning girl in a bathrobe opened the door, exchanged a few words with him, and let them both inside. Several moments later Bellamy stepped back out, his hands in his pockets.

Bellamy didn’t walk back to the driver’s seat. Instead he joined her at the back of the Rover, his arms crossed. They both leaned against the bumper and stared up at the stars.

“I suppose you think that was my fault,” he said after several moments.

Clarke wanted to say no, but all the feelings she had been suppressing while Bree was in the car came surging back to the surface. For a moment she wanted to yell at him, could feel herself becoming that judgmental, furious _princess_ she so often became around him. But at the last moment, all the fight leaked out of her. She sagged against the car, exhausted.

 “I’m not blaming you. I’ve just… accepted that you have no redeeming qualities.” _Except for your freckles and those muscles for which I know no decent name_ , Clarke thought, but she did not say this out loud.

“You could start an argument in an empty house.” His smile flashed, but just for a second. He took a careful breath. “Clarke, where’d you learn to do that?”

“Where’d _you_ learn?”

“I’m a bartender. That’s an average Friday night for me.”

“Oh. Right.” She crossed her arms over her chest, mimicking his posture. “What a noble career you’ve carved out for yourself.”

“Where’d you learn that, Clarke?”

He knew. She could tell by the look in his eyes, even in the dark, and by how still was holding himself, the way his brows were lowered.

Clarke curled her hands around her elbows, trying to keep her stomach in. “Raven never…”

“Never what?”

“Never said how we became such good friends? What we had in common?”

He looked confused.

Clarke sighed. “Promise not to tell anyone.” When Bellamy nodded, Clarke took a deep, bracing breath. “It’s my mom. She…drinks. Just like Raven’s.”

Clarke watched him carefully, almost angrily, ready to jump all over him if he said the wrong thing. But Bellamy didn’t. He just nodded again, like Clarke had confirmed his suspicions.

“What does she drink?” he asked.

“ _What?_ ”

“What’s her poison?” When Clarke just glared at him in disbelief, he raised his brows. “What? It makes a difference. I should know.”

“Red wine,” Clarke said slowly. “Usually. But when she’s really sad she goes for vodka. Or pills. That’s the worst of it.”

“No wonder you hated me.” To Clarke’s amazement, he was smiling, albeit in a wry, sideways fashion. “Working in a bar, pouring out booze to anyone who’ll pay. No wonder you hated me.”

“Who says I don’t still?” Clarke muttered, but against her will she found herself smiling a little too.

She looked back at him and saw that Bellamy’s smile was real now and held not an ounce of judgment. The moonlight silvered the very tips of his curls and the edge of his jaw. He had his hands wedged in his pockets, and his shoulders shrugged up to his ears. It was inexplicably adorable.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Clarke said, softer this time. “I—I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed, but I am.”

“I won’t. It’s the Bartender Code of Ethics.” He shook his head. “Honestly, you have no idea how many dirty little secrets I’ve been told over the years. Trust me, Princess. That’s not even close to the dirtiest one.”

“Really?” Clarke said curiously, straightening off the bumper. “What kind of dirt can you give me on Raven? She’s _definitely_ hacked into the Pentagon, right? Murphy for sure is a murderer. Oh no— _Monty._ He can’t really be that nice. He’s a secret serial killer, isn’t he?”

Bellamy grinned. “No way. I can’t break my code.”

“Come on!” Clarke said, but he held up his hands apologetically, and Clarke actually laughed. “Maybe I’ll just get you drunk and, I don’t know, seduce it out of you.”

Bellamy looked like he couldn’t believe Clarke had actually said that. Neither could she. Maybe it was possible to be drunk on laughter and moonlight. Drunk on someone else and the way they made your heart just a little bit lighter and your head just a little bit clearer.

Bellamy stepped around her to the passenger side.

“You know,” he said, as he tugged the door open for her, “that might actually work on me, too.”

 

#

His Rover smelled like her.

Bellamy’s hand rested on the car keys, but he was reluctant to turn them. The moment he started the car, the countdown to the night ending would begin. She was quiet in the passenger seat, staring thoughtfully out the window, her hands folded in her lap.

Bellamy didn’t _want_ the night to be over. This strange ceasefire would most certainly end the moment they returned home. For some reason he couldn’t bear to return to the site of all their petty squabbles. To the land of chore charts and dish duty and Clarke’s razors taking up half the shower shelf.

“You know,” he said casually, his nerves so tight he could practically feel them humming, “the drive thru’s 24/7.”

She shot him a sideways, suspicious look. “Oh yeah?”

“You like burgers.”

“I do like burgers.”

“And milkshakes.”

“Those too.”

Bellamy shrugged. “We could go.”

Clarke still looked like she thought Bellamy was plotting something. “We could.”

Their gazes held. And then abruptly she relented, sitting back in the seat as if too tired to fight. “Fuck it. I’m hungry.”

Bellamy smiled and started the Rover.

“This doesn’t mean we’re friends,” Clarke said as he shifted into drive.

“God, no. You’re still the princess who never asks if I need to throw something in with her laundry loads.”

“I do ask!” Clarke said. “You just never take me up on it!”

“Because your loads are always full of delicates. Who has that many bras?”

“Why are you counting my bras?”

He turned onto the main thoroughfare and picked up speed, his heart racing along with the Rover. Quiet nights, driving in the dark, a girl at his side. On paper, this was all building up to A Night, in caps, the kind they wrote stories and songs about. But this was Clarke, and nothing with Clarke was remotely normal.

“Because we’re not,” Clarke said. “Friends, I mean. I don’t like you.”

“That’s fine. I don’t like you either.”

“And you can’t tell Raven about this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Bellamy imagined for a moment the complete shock on Raven’s face when she heard that Clarke and Bellamy had gone out together, alone, voluntarily, and knew she would pelt him with questions he didn’t want to answer even the slightest bit. No, he definitely wasn’t telling her.

Clarke rolled down the window and shut her eyes. Her gold hair, nearly silver in the moonlight, danced in the wind, and her fingers drew swirling shapes on the dashboard.

“Bellamy.”

“What?”

“The light’s turned green.” Clarke was looking at him in concern.

Shit. Bellamy hastily turned his attention back to the road and hit the gas. Good thing it was late enough that no cars had been waiting behind them.

He pulled into the neon lane of the drive thru and smiled at the eagerness that lit Clarke’s face as she sat forward to peer at the menu. They both ordered fries and milkshakes. Bellamy got chocolate. Clarke got strawberry.

“ _Chocolate?_ ” Clarke said disparagingly, as if Bellamy had ordered poison.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those monsters who doesn’t like chocolate.”

“I mean, it’s okay.”

“It’s _okay?_ Chocolate is _okay?_ ”

He pulled into one of the spots in the parking lot, which he knew defeated the purpose of a drive thru lane, but sitting in the Rover was better than sitting inside. He was glad that Clarke seemed to agree, since she unbuckled her seatbelt and settled into a comfortable eating position like the front seat of a car was a five-star establishment. He had the feeling this girl could upgrade any place she deemed worthy by her mere presence.

“Clearly strawberry is the best option for a milkshake,” she said, and pursed her lips around the top of the straw and sucked. Bellamy’s brain short-circuited for a second, and he had to shake his head to restart it.

“But you can’t dip your fries in  _strawberry_ ,” Bellamy argued. “And that’s time-honored. It’s a classic.”

Clarke’s nose wrinkled. “You dip your fries in chocolate milkshake?”

Bellamy could not believe what he was hearing. “Have you never met a person before? Or seen a movie?”

He wedged his shake into the cup holder between them and popped the lid off. Clarke looked at it warily.

“Go on,” Bellamy said. “Prove me wrong.”

“I hate a challenge,” Clarke muttered, but she dipped a fry in and ate it.

Her look of mistrust melted.

“Huh,” she said, still chewing. “This is actually good.”

Bellamy grinned in triumph. “I’m sure your strawberry shake is good too.”

“It _is_. Berry is my favorite flavor of everything, pretty much. I even like the color.” She touched the ends of her hair self-consciously. “I’ve always wanted to get berry-colored streaks in my hair.”

Bellamy dipped one of his own fries in the chocolate milkshake. “You should.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” Clarke dipped another and then wedged it in her mouth like a cigarette. “It’s not—me, I guess.”

“It could be you. If you want it, then it’s you.”

Clarke munched on her fry in silence. For several minutes, the only sounds were of them trading turns dunking and eating their fries.

Then she turned to him. “Okay, don’t hate me. But since we’re being—not friends, and all, let me ask you. What about what you want?”

“What do you mean?” Bellamy said, but his heart flipped over in his chest.

“You deferred school. Raven said you really wanted to go. You’d even worked out this special focus in the classics department on Greek and Roman mythology and literature—”

“I told you why,” Bellamy said, his jaw tight. “It’s just me and O, and her college is expensive. Not all of us have moms who buy us everything.”

“I know that, but surely there’s another way where—”

“Look,” Bellamy said angrily, “you may think it’s stupid and irresponsible to put off school and take a shit job with shit hours and shit pay, and hell, maybe you’re right, but—

“I don’t,” Clarke said. “I’m not judging you.”

Bellamy had been gripping his carton of fries too tightly. He relaxed his grip.

“I was just going to say…” Clarke took a shuddery breath. “Your sister’s really lucky to have you.”

“Oh,” Bellamy said.

There was an awkward silence, and then they both reached a fry toward the chocolate milkshake at the same time. Their knuckles brushed, and Clarke whipped her hand back at once.

“I—I’m sorry I’m so judgmental,” Clarke said softly. “I just—can’t help but want everyone around me to do well in the way that I think is right. Even if they don’t want it. Even if I’m not right. I’m working on it. Raven says I’m always trying to fix things.” She twirled a blonde curl around her finger. “You know, like princesses do.”

“Princesses and Wise Girls,” he said, his eyes drawn to that lock of hair despite himself.

“Wise what?”

“Oh, come on,” Bellamy said. “First chocolate milkshakes, now Percy Jackson? You’ve seriously never read Percy Jackson?”

“Is that the one they made a really bad movie of?”

“Oh, holy shit,” Bellamy said. “You’ve never read Percy Jackson. I’m confiscating the chocolate milkshake. You don’t deserve this.”

“No!” Clarke protested, and she actually laughed as Bellamy pulled the cup out of her reach.

“Promise you’ll read the whole first series at least. Then you get the milkshake back.”

“Bellamy!”

“You have to promise. Swear on Demeter, goddess of nourishment, and I’ll let you have it.”

“I promise,” Clarke said, and snatched the milkshake back. “I had no idea you were such a nerd.”

“And I had no idea you were so uncultured,” Bellamy said. “You’ve never read Percy Jackson. Jesus Christ.”

She smiled at her chocolate-dipped fries. “Did you read the books with Octavia when she was young or something? Is that how you found them?”

“I could lie and tell you yes,” Bellamy said, “but nope, those were all me. I read them to O later when she was old enough, but Percy Jackson was my Harry Potter until, you know, Harry Potter became my Harry Potter.” He shot her a stern look. “You _have_ read Harry Potter, right?”

Clarke looked offended. “Of course. I’m not a Philistine.”

“Jury’s still out on that.”

Clarke threw a fry at him.

“Only Philistines waste a perfectly good fry,” he said, and they grinned at each other.

The street lamp above them flickered off and then on again. Clarke jumped as if startled.

“Shit, it’s late." She cast a worried look through the window. “We’ve been here for ages. We should get home.”

He’d forgotten that they were sitting in the dark, in a car, in a mostly-empty fast food parking lot. It was very warm inside the Rover, like they’d been sitting in some sort of protective bubble, a space carved out of the real world. A bubble that was minutes from popping, probably for good.

“Right,” Bellamy said, the salt of the fries suddenly turned bitter in his mouth. “Home. Yeah.”

She held out the chocolate milkshake. “You want the last of it?”

“Nah. You keep it.”

He started the car and pulled out of the lot. They were quiet again, and this time Clarke kept the window up and Bellamy kept his eyes to himself.

In no time at all Bellamy was easing the Rover into their driveway.

“Do you think Raven’s home?” Bellamy asked quietly.

Clarke started again. “Oh my god. I haven’t checked my phone _once_ tonight.” She dug it out of her purse and scrolled very intently. “Oh. Looks like Raven met a guy.”

“She what?” said Bellamy. “A guy? What kind of guy? At the _bar?_ ”

Clarke’s lips twitched. “Raven said you’d activate Protective Bellamy mode. She also told me to tell you to knock it off.”

Bellamy huffed. “No way she said that.”

Clarke held out her phone so he could read the screen.

 

**Raven Reyes 1:41 am**

Yeah his name is Zeke. Air force. CUTE. Cocky. Possibly annoying. Says he’s smarter than me but I doubt it. Will keep you posted. Tell Bellamy not to expect me home tonight and when Protective Bellamy Mode kicks in tell him to knock it the hell off

 

Sometimes it didn’t suck to have people know you.

“Does she have any idea what kind of guys hang out at bars?” Bellamy said, tamping down his smile.

Clarke took her phone back. “Says the guy who hangs out at bars.”

“You could start an argument in an empty house,” he said again, and Clarke let out an exasperated noise.

“ _Quoting_ yourself. You truly are the most dramatic person who’s even been inflicted on me. I’m going to bed.”

She put her hand on the door handle, about to open it, when for god knows what reason, Bellamy reached across her to open it himself.

He wasn’t sure why he did it. There was no door-opening protocol for not-friends not-hanging out in a platonic-enemies kind of way. This wasn’t a date. But some latent instinct kicked in, and suddenly his hand was covering hers, dwarfing hers, their faces were inches apart, and her body was warm and close and soft behind him. It was like leaning across a campfire. Being this close to her burned. His nerve endings ignited. All his senses kicked into overdrive in what he could only call a major histocompatibility attack, sending his pulse racing and his heart galloping. The scent of her filled him.

“What—what are you—?”

“Sorry.” Bellamy drew back at once. His heart hammered. “I—Uh.”

She popped the door open and stepped out. He looked down at the hand that had covered hers, stretched it, and followed her out of the car.

They kept a careful distance as they walked up the drive, up the stairs, and waited together on the stoop as Clarke unlocked the front door. Almost as if a phantom Raven were now with them, standing between them. Either chaperoning or refereeing, Bellamy couldn’t decide.

Bellamy tried to remember if they had ever touched purposefully before. There had been the knuckle graze with the French fries. But beyond that, if they ever did touch, it was to elbow or kick or bat a hand away. One time she had accidentally bumped into him in the kitchen doorway and leapt away like Bellamy had been carrying the plague.

No, he and Clarke were definitely not friends. Their animosity was legendary. It was established fact among their friends. Nothing in the world made sense if Clarke and Bellamy didn’t hate each other. Wasn’t Raven always saying that?

Wasn’t Clarke?

She bid him a quiet goodnight in the hall and vanished into her bedroom. Exhausted, Bellamy trudged into his own room and shut the door. Finally he could breathe. Finally he was in a space that didn’t smell like her.

He tore his shirt off and stepped out of his jeans and into a pair of sweatpants. He heard the unmistakable sounds of Clarke moving bottles around the bathroom sink and decided to wait to brush his own teeth. Normally they jostled for morning space in the mirror, Clarke ordering him to be smaller and Bellamy telling her off for having such pointy elbows.

He didn’t have the energy for that tonight.

Bellamy was about to fall onto his bed when he spotted the Percy Jackson boxset on his bookshelf. He pulled it down and placed it on his bedside table so he’d remember, in the morning, to give it to her.

Then he got into bed and shut off the light.

He dreamed of blonde hair in the moonlight and burning campfires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I kind of did poor Bree dirty here, but I needed a plot device. And now I need french fries. Thanks as always for your comments, lovely people <3


	4. A Surprisingly Civil Kind of Civil War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No Smurfs were harmed in the making of this chapter.

The semester started, to Clarke’s immense relief. It meant routine, and Clarke loved routine. It meant work, more work than she’d ever had in her life, and she loved work. It meant getting out of the house.

And the house was suddenly dangerous.

Clarke sat cross-legged on her bed, reading a particularly dry chapter of her textbook on Etruscan art, when Bellamy knocked so hard on her door (flat-palmed—she _hated_ that) that it creaked open.

“Hey!” she said.

“It’s two-thirty in the morning.” His dark eyes were snapping, and his curls were so rumpled they nearly looked electrified. “Turn off your god damn fucking garbage music _please_.”

“Oh, well, I’m glad you said please. Otherwise someone might mistake you for being impolite.”

“Turn. It. Off.”

“I can’t study without music.”

“I have a six am shift, princess. Use your _headphones._ ”

“ _Fine!_ ” Clarke snatched her rose gold headphones off her dresser. “And my music is not garbage.”

Bellamy slammed the door shut, muttering something uncomplimentary (and therefore blasphemous) to Florence + the Machine.

Then there was the battle they’d waged over the last bag of salt and vinegar chips. She’d wanted it for studying. He’d wanted it for binge watching _Firefly_. There had been no survivors.

Raven joked that she needed to buy a referee whistle to wear around the house, but there was a hard look in her eyes. She would not tolerate this escalation in warfare for long.

It seemed like every day there was a new thing to fight over, and Clarke couldn’t explain it. There was a strange _intensity_ to their bickering, as if the salt and vinegar chips were something colossally personal. Life-or-death stakes. End-of-world stuff. When Clarke met Bellamy’s gaze now, there was a sense of unmet expectation on both their ends. Like they’d both failed to do something very crucial and the other person was holding it against them. But Clarke didn’t want anything from Bellamy. Other than the salt and vinegar chips, of course.

Bellamy was definitely looking at her far more than he had before.

So she was glad to be out of the house more often. Clarke went out with Finn as often as she could, but mostly she was somewhere on campus, studying or eating or meeting with her professors.

Raven barged into her bedroom one Saturday morning, her ponytail swishing and her expression full of purpose. “Great. You’re up.”

“Of course I’m up. It’s eight thirty.”

Raven snorted. “Weirdo.”

“Was there something you wanted?”

“Yes.” Raven plonked a can of paint on Clarke’s desk.

Clarke stared at it for a good ten seconds. “Where’s the punchline?”

“You’re not running off to the library.” Raven stated it like binding fact. “You’re not seeing Finn. You’re not meeting with any study groups. You’re not burying yourself in a textbook. You’re helping me and Bellamy paint the living room.”

There were so many things to protest in that speech Clarke didn’t know where to begin. So she bypassed them all and said, “I thought we weren’t going to do any painting?”

“White is boring. I’m over white. I want something artistic.”

“Do you,” Clarke said, since Raven was about as artistic as a tank of jet fuel.

“And, well, _you’re_ artistic.”

“Am I.”

“Come on, we could end up with something really fun! Remember how you told me you used to paint your bedroom walls all the time as a teen?”

“That was a long time ago,” Clarke said, and her stomach twisted tight. “I study art, I don’t make it. Not really.”

“Nothing like the smell of lies in the morning,” Raven said. “You’re doing this. And we need a roommates project.”

“Ahh,” Clarke said, finally understanding and not at all happy about it. “I see. So instead of buying a whistle, you bought a can of paint.”

“I bought _twenty_ cans of paint.”

“You— _what?_ ”

“I’m telling you, we’re not doing this by halves. Throw on something you don’t mind getting all paint-y and meet us outside. Bellamy made coffee. Remember to thank him for it.”

Clarke looped her hair into a ponytail and tossed on her oldest yoga pants and a university t-shirt. In the living room, Bellamy shoved a steaming mug into her hands without making eye contact. He was wearing his reading glasses and looked uncomfortably like James Potter. She’d always had a thing for James Potter.

Sheets had already been thrown over the furniture, and Raven had arranged the dramatic excess of paint colors against the bare white wall.

“Go on.” Raven spread her hands. “Pick a color.”

Clarke shot Bellamy a furtive glance and then looked away. “Why do _we_ have to pick?”

“Because, let’s be honest, you’ll care the most.”

“I don’t care what color this room is,” Bellamy said, offended. “Just not red.”

“I don’t care either,” said Clarke. “Except it can’t be pink. We’re not twelve.”

“Yellow’s supposed to be cheerful. Like a light yellow, maybe.”

Clarke wrinkled her nose. “But would we get tired of yellow? Yellow’s a lot. And none of our stuff matches yellow.”

“Then orange.”

“Do you want this place to look like we live in the seventies? No way. Green could be nice. Like a forest-y green.”

“Hmm.” Bellamy looked thoughtful. She liked his thoughtful look, all forehead wrinkles, reading glasses, and the side of a finger brushed back and forth across his lips. “Then green’s on the table.”

“Or deep blue. A meditative, midnight blue.” Clarke pointed at a can on the end.

“Definitely in the running.”

“Raven?” Clarke looked to Raven and saw her watching them as if she were trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, you two _definitely_ don’t care.”

In the end, picking the wall color was settled in democratic fashion. The votes went to deep blue.

“A Ravenclaw color,” Raven said in approval. “Awesome. We’ll need a few more cans, but Bellamy doesn’t mind making a run later.”

“I don’t?”

“You don’t.”

Bellamy yanked Raven’s ponytail, and she shoved him.

“Lapis Lazuli,” Clarke said, pouring the first can into the tray and ignoring the easy, familial way her roommates teased each other. It reminded her of herself and Wells a million years ago, and that was a train of thought she was not allowing into the station. “They used to grind it to make ultramarine paint before synthetic paints were invented. It was the most expensive pigment in the world, but it’s the most amazing blue. Totally worth it. They always say blue is a sad color, but if you keep it rich in hue, then this wall will be like…like looking at the calmest ocean. Or the infinity of a galaxy. Harmony, peace, tranquility. Blue can say a lot of things.”

“I never thought colors said anything.” Raven knelt beside her, grimacing slightly as her brace creaked, and dragged a brush through the lake of blue. “Who knew they were so chatty?”

“Centuries upon centuries of artists.”

A strange, electric feeling swept across Clarke’s skin, and she looked up directly into Bellamy’s gaze. He was watching her from across the room. They both looked away immediately.

Raven, ever the straight shooter, stood up and crossed her arms. “No way. None of _that_. It’s a good thing blue is a calming color, because if this is a buildup to a civil war, I’m not having it. I refuse to share a house with Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, _no way_.”

“It’s not,” Bellamy said, while Clarke quickly confiscated the brush from Raven before it dripped onto the uncovered floor. She’d need to grab some newspaper from the recycling.

“It’s not,” she said, but it probably was.

Bellamy made the run to Home Depot, returning with more blue cans of paint, and slowly the job got done. The blank canvas turned blue, then bluer, then even bluer, and so did the newspaper-ed floor, and Clarke’s shirt, and even the tips of Clarke’s hair somewhere along the way. Her back ached, and her arm hurt…and a familiar, raw feeling had opened up inside her. She loved holding a paintbrush. She loved make color unfurl from her hands.

She took care of the tricky edges with the brush while Raven and Bellamy used the rollers to fill the space, occasionally insulting each other’s technique or chiding one another for missing a spot.

They were halfway done when Raven set her roller down in the tray with a splash. Clarke stifled a cry. She’d nagged at them all morning to be tidy, and if she said one more thing about it, she suspected one of them would overturn a can on her head.

“Damn, is that the time?” Raven made a show of checking her phone. An actress she was not. “I totally forgot. I have to meet my lab partner. But you guys can finish up without me, right? I can trust you to get it done?”

Silence.

“Sweet!” said Raven brightly. She grabbed Bellamy’s hand and levered herself to her feet. “Can’t wait to be living in the Ravenclaw common room! I have full faith in you guys.”

In under five minutes she was out the door, a streak of blue still on her cheek.

“Well.” Clarke sat hard atop the ladder. “We sure are suckers.”

“The biggest.” Bellamy raked a blue hand through his hair. “I feel like Tom Sawyer just tricked me into painting his fence.”

Clarke looked at him fast. She was surprised, and impressed, that he knew the reference, but knew it was not kind of her.

Bellamy accurately read her expression. “Shocking, I know. The bartender reads books. Whodathunk.”

The biting, sarcastic note in his voice was the final straw. She was tired. Every bit of her hurt. He’d been annoying her for _weeks_ , always looking at her in a challenge, as if waiting for her to say something, do something, but she didn’t know what the hell it _was_.

Clarke slashed at him with her paintbrush, smearing a wide, flat sweep of blue right across his chest.

For a moment, there was only silence. Bellamy stared at his ruined shirt in astonishment, then looked back up at Clarke.

He swiped his paint roller down her arm.

For the briefest of moments, sanity returned, urging her to be sensible, mature Clarke, who worried about staining the furniture. But she was tired. She was tired of fighting with him, and tired of being a princess. She’d felt such a rush giving into her silliest instincts. And Bellamy, freckled with blue, was looking at her, one eyebrow raised in a challenge. There was paint on his James Potter glasses.

“Oh,” Clarke said. “It. Is. _On_.”

Their brush and roller met, hard, like two swords caught in a parry, and blue paint sprayed across them both. Clarke laughed in surprise, but Bellamy took advantage of the moment of weakness by catching her on the cheek.

“Gah!”

Fine. If he wanted a war, he’d gotten a war.

Clarke snatched up Raven’s abandoned roller.

“Smart,” Bellamy said. “Double weapons. Really smart.”

He charged her, chasing her around the ladder and catching her arm with the roller. She couldn’t help it. She screamed, half-laughing, slashing wildly at him with her brush. This probably wasn’t the civil war Raven had envisioned for them, but it was worlds better. She could not stop laughing. It was such a relief not to think, just to do. She splashed a fat blob of paint into his hair, and he managed to roll a perfect skunk stripe down her back.

“Truce, truce!” Bellamy said, laughing and holding up his hands. Clarke had just gotten him square on the nose. “There’s nothing left of us to paint.”

Clarke pulled out the bottom of her t-shirt to inspect at all the damage. “We look like we just massacred a village of smurfs.”

Bellamy laughed again, making her grin. He had a good laugh, rusty with disuse. Why did he so rarely use it?

Bellamy leaned against the ladder, looking wiped, and Clarke sat gingerly atop a square of newspaper.

He gestured at the carnage. “I, uh, guess you want us to clean this up now.”

Clarke knew she should, but her heart was still fizzing. “Eh. Eventually. Let’s take a break and order pizza.”

“Really?”

“The Great Paint Wars of 2018 took a lot out of me,” Clarke said, and he chuckled.

They ordered a gigantic pizza and split the toppings. Her half had dollops of ricotta, chicken, roasted garlic, and artichokes.

“Artichokes,” Bellamy said. “On a _pizza_.”

“Take it up with Italy,” Clarke said.

Bellamy’s half had Italian sausage, pepperoni, meatballs, and bacon.

Clarke rolled her eyes. “Yes, we get it. You’re _male_. You like _meat._ Point _taken._ ”

When they opened the door for the delivery guy, his eyes popped wide at the sight of them looking like rejects from the Blue Man Group. Clarke and Bellamy held it together while they took their pizza and paid, but the moment he was gone, they dissolved into laughter again.

They sat on the middle of the newspaper-ed floor and ate their pizzas right there. Clarke wondered what her mother would think of them.

She looked up at Bellamy, paint-splattered, uncaring, holes in his jeans, calluses on his rough hands, eating his meat lover’s atrocity of a pizza with gusto,  and didn’t have to wonder what her mother would think of _him._

“So,” Bellamy said, “serious question.”

“Oh?” Clarke’s voice was clipped as she sat up straight, bracing herself.

“Which of us do you think Raven thought was Captain America, and which of us was Iron Man?”

Clarke’s posture relaxed as she laughed in surprise. “Obviously I’m Captain America. You’re Tony Stark.”

Bellamy’s brows shot up. “ _You’re_ Steve Rogers? No way. She meant me.”

Clarke held up a hand and began to tick her fingers. “One: you both have dark hair.”

“That’s totally surface—”

“Two: sarcastic to a fault. Three: attempted misguided facial hair. Still looks good somehow. Four: a child of tragedy.”

“And _privilege_. He’s the brilliant scientist kid of brilliant scientists. How is that not you?”

“And he’ll do anything, _anything_ , for the people he cares about,” Clarke said firmly, “to the detriment of himself and, sometimes, the greater good. I know I’m right. You can’t win this civil war.”

“Well, I know I’m right.”

“And thus we’ve reached an impasse.” Clarke took a dignified bite of her pizza.

“You eat pizza so weirdly,” Bellamy said. “Why do you fold it in half like that?”

“Um, because that’s the proper way to do it? Who raised you?”

Bellamy’s smile was wry. “I did.”

Clarke didn’t know what to say. She took a sip of coke to cover the silence.

“Careful,” Bellamy said, “there’s paint on your straw.”

“How on earth did it get there?”

“Paint fights’ll do that to you. I don’t think we’ll ever be free of the blue. Once, when Octavia was a kid, we had a food fight in the kitchen and a full week later I found a piece of spaghetti in her hair.”

Clarke grinned. “You got into a spaghetti fight? In your _house?_ ”

“Yeah, it was before foster care, so we were still in the apartment with Mom. It was the best. O kicked my ass. I kept going too easy on her and she finally dumped her whole bowl on my head.” His own grin widened. “Worth the clean-up. And the grounding.”

Well, that was painfully adorable. And totally proved her Tony point.

With a small shock, Clarke realized that she genuinely liked Bellamy Blake as a person. She didn’t know why it hit her now, or if she was a terrible person for taking so long, but she did. Even if they almost never got along. Even if they were so different that his answers always surprised her.

Or maybe it was _because_ he was different and surprising.

She found she didn’t want the day to end.

“So,” Clarke said, “should we get back to painting?”

Bellamy grimaced. “Sorry, princess, I’ve got work. I’ll help you clean up before I ditch, though.”

Clarke was oddly disappointed but hid it. “Just as well. I’ll probably finish in twice the time without your interference.”

He rolled his eyes, but she caught a smile in the corner of his mouth.

After the living room was back to a semi reasonable state, Bellamy left.

Clarke took advantage of the empty house and took a long, _long_ shower, lost in tangled thoughts, until the water no longer ran blue and she felt like herself again. She needed a break from painting and a chance to clear her head. Catch her breath.

Later that afternoon, when Raven still hadn’t returned, Clarke stood in front of the blank blue walls and the array of brushes and paints and really looked at it.

It had been a very long time since she’d really painted. In her senior year of high school, when her carefully curated life had fallen apart, she’d stepped away from creating her own art. When she left for college she’d thrown all her focus onto learning about the art of white, straight European men who’d died hundreds of years before her. Ever since, she hadn’t felt moved to create. Not really.

But for some reason, staring at that blank, blue, ultramarine wall, she did. It was a Matisse kind of blue. A Lapis lazuli blue. A waiting, dreaming blue.

She thought of sitting in the front seat of the Rover with Bellamy in the fast food parking lot, looking through the windshield at the night sky. Standing with him outside Bree’s house, her gaze tilted up.

She grabbed some more paints and brushes from her room. And as the sun sank and the moon rose, Clarke painted.

 

#

 

When Bellamy pulled into the driveway, tired down to the bone, the sky was just beginning to lighten at the edges. He was so heavy with exhaustion that it was an effort even to turn the engine off. It had been a hell of a night. His body hurt from standing up, he’d made fuck all in tips, and his brain felt stretched thin after not having had a decent conversation in hours.

Every light in the house was still on, which made him frown in confusion. It was silent inside. He made his way toward the bedrooms and saw that Raven’s door was shut tight, but Clarke’s was open. He knew he shouldn’t look, but he did. There was her tidy desk, her small circular rug, her rolled up yoga mat, her bed. Empty and perfectly made. So she was with Finn. Great.

His stomach flipped over. Jesus, it had no business doing that. _Stay where you are, stomach._

Bellamy switched off the hall light and the kitchen lights, moved at last into the living room, and stopped dead in the doorway.

Clarke was fast asleep on the couch. She was not a dainty sleeper. Her mouth gaped, and her head lolled. There was a streak of paint on her nose, and her hands were ten different colors. Her chest rose and fell, and her small feet were tucked beneath a pillow.

Bellamy’s stomach did something entirely different.

He debated what to do for several seconds—should he wake her? Would she get sore, sleeping in that position?—and realized that he was just standing there, watching her sleep, for far longer than was okay. Bellamy grabbed his blanket, which was draped across the armchair, and threw it over her.

She stirred, and he held his breath.

But Clarke simply snuggled into the blanket, rolling into a much more comfortable position, and continued sleeping. Strands of blonde hair tumbled into her face. He had the mad urge to brush them away.

“Now you’ve _definitely_ lost your mind,” Bellamy muttered. She’d probably wake up and bite his fingers off. It’d be safer to brush open flame.

He shut off the final light and stepped back in surprise.

Bellamy, like the idiot he was, had focused all his attention on the sleeping Clarke and hadn’t looked at the blue wall once. But it wasn’t just blue. It was blue, black, pink, and purple. It was the night sky, vast and infinite and restful, just as she’d said, freckled with bright, swirling stars that _glowed in the dark_. They _glowed._ Actually glowed.

She had painted a window into space. It felt like he was standing on the edge of the known universe, and if he took one step forward he’d never come back.

Holy shit.

Heart hammering, Bellamy looked down at Clarke, asleep beneath a ratty blanket in the faint glow of her painted stars, and felt another of his defenses fall pathetically, fatally to dust.

Deep, deep shit.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight delay on this chapter! Life got busy. Thanks as always for your comments <3 ALSO: Is Clarke right about who's Tony and who's Steve, or is Bellamy? Serious question for science.


	5. The Great British Bellarke Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking of adding "idiots to lovers" as a tag for this fic because yeah that about sums it up.

Bellamy’s Saturday shift started at seven sharp, and he was running late. He had no choice but to jam into the tiny bathroom next to Clarke, who was primping for a date with Finn. Bellamy tried extremely hard to ignore her as he stuck his razor under the running tap. But their hips were smashed together and their elbows kept brushing. He might as well ignore his own hands.

Bellamy craned closer to the mirror, knocking into her yet again.

Clarke pursed her lips in annoyance. “You just made me liquid line my cheek.”

“Sorry. Trying not to sever an artery here.”

The scent of grapefruit was _everywhere._

Clarke leaned forward, her stomach pressed into the edge of the sink, until she was practically kissing her own reflection. Her softly curled hair skimmed his shoulder, and the low v of her top gaped even lower.

Bellamy forgot he was holding a razor.

Histocompatibility was a fucking _bitch._

When she began painting her lips the maddeningly distracting color of summer berries, Bellamy conceded defeat. He escaped the grapefruit hell of the bathroom with only half his jaw shaved and thought bitterly about where that lipstick was going to end up later tonight.

 

#

It was a slow night, so Bellamy was able to escape the bar just after 2 am. He was still in a foul, bitter mood that had everything to do with berry lips. His soul felt empty of everything but the darkest dregs of old burnt coffee, and when he pulled the Rover into the driveway he actually felt the desire for a beer, which was something he never craved after a shift. Watching other people drink usually put him off it.

To his surprise, the lights were on inside. Someone was watching TV. He shrugged off his jacket, wincing at his sore feet, and trudged into the living room.

It was Clarke. She looked like she’d been there a while, though she was dressed exactly as he’d left her—low silky top, bare shoulders, styled hair, heeled boots. Her lipstick was one hundred percent intact.

Bellamy felt a savage flash of victory—which he was _not_ going to analyze— followed by shame. He shoved those away at once.

“Clarke?”

She didn’t look away from the TV, which was playing one of the twenty or so _Jeopardy!_ episodes they’d stored on the DVR. “You’re home early.”

“I was gonna say the same to you.”

“You have to leave to come home,” she said crisply, glaring so hard at Alex Trebek that Bellamy was surprised the guy didn’t burst into flames.

“Finn cancel on you?”

“That would imply he contacted me at all tonight. Which he did not. And Amelia from Wisconsin didn’t know that the Disney animated film released in 1994 was _The Lion King_ because apparently she was in a fucking underground bunker for the entire decade of the nineties, and of course wagered twelve thousand dollars on it _like an idiot_ and now she is in _last place_.”

Bellamy glanced at the TV, where Amelia from Wisconsin was looking distinctly watery-eyed, and imagined his fist smashing into Finn Collins’ jaw. It was a very satisfying fantasy.

“He’s an asshole,” Bellamy said, sinking onto the couch beside her. Well, not directly beside her. There were at least two Ravens between them. Bellamy often thought of his proximity to Clarke like this—kind of like how the nuns at his Catholic middle school had prowled the gym floor at school dances, wrenching couples apart and reminding them to keep enough space between them “for the holy ghost”. If two Ravens could sit side by side between them, he was good.

Clarke blinked, as if coming back to herself, and looked at him. “No, he’s not. He just—something must have happened.”

“Yeah, something happened,” Bellamy said. “He’s an _asshole_.”

“No, Alex _Trebek_ is an asshole. Smug bastard always acting like he’s better than the contestants, as if he knows all the answers, as if they’re not _written on the screen in front of him_ , like of _course_ he knew the main export of this obscure port city in north Venezuela or whatever—”

Bellamy tried really hard not to laugh. “Clarke, it’s two am and you’re sitting here alone. I mean, come on. _Look_ at you.”

Clarke looked offended. “Look at me?”

“It took you, what, an hour to do all—that? And he doesn’t even call. I mean, you look—you look—” Bellamy stopped himself. God, he should have put more Ravens between them.

How was he even planning to finish that sentence?

Clarke looked entirely wrongfooted. Her dark pink lips were parted, but no words were coming out.

Her phone beeped on the coffee table.

She leapt on it at once, snatching it up so fast she sent the remote flying.

Her expression cleared, and Bellamy knew already that it was Finn. That bitter coffee feeling intensified alarmingly.

“It’s him.” She sounded so relieved that his fingers dug into the couch cushion. “He was at the library and lost track of time. I knew it. I knew it had to be something like that.”

“ _Lost track of time_?” Bellamy echoed “At the _library?_ ”

But Clarke wasn’t listening to him. She was already on her feet, scooping up the remote, turning off the TV, slinging her purse over her shoulder. Grabbing her dark blue bomber jacket.

“Hold up.” Bellamy was suddenly standing as well, sore feet be damned. “You’re not seriously going out to meet him?”

“Of course I am! We have a date.”

“You had a date _seven hours ago_. And he didn’t bother to show up!”

Clarke’s jaw hardened, and he recognized her most stubborn expression. Raven called it her General Griffin look. “He was at the library doing research. It’s not like he stood me up on purpose. Not that it’s any of your business where I go or what I do or who I date.”

She was right. Bellamy knew she was right. There were a million and one reasons why he should step back, shut up, and let her drive herself across town to Finn’s apartment at two in the god damn morning.

But there was one reason why he couldn’t, and Bellamy was nothing if not a complete _idiot_.

“Clarke,” he said. “Why are you dating this guy?”

She sucked in a breath, fury sparking in her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“You deserve to be treated better than that. Why do you let him do this to you?”

“ _Let him?_ ” Her voice was cold and dangerous.

His own voice was heated and rising. “What he did to you tonight was complete shit! He should be groveling on his knees. _He_ should be driving to _you_ , and he should show up with—fuck, I don’t know, a three-tiered cake with _I’m Sorry, Clarke_ written on it in frosting.”

“Well. Here in _reality_ , we make allowances for people’s mistakes.”

Bellamy laughed. “Wow. Coming from you, that is rich.”

“You told me once that I’m not in charge here. Well. The same goes for you. You do not get to dictate what I do, Bellamy Blake. You do not get to tell me how to live my life.”

Bellamy’s heart was thumping wildly, his blood pounding in his ears. But somehow he managed to step back and raise his hands in surrender. “Fine. Go and live it, then.”

She did. Without another word. Without a single look.

It wasn’t until the lock clicked behind her that Bellamy noticed Raven gaping in the dark doorway that led to the bedrooms.

“What?” She tilted her head, her ponytail swinging. “The hell? Was that?”

“I need a beer.” Bellamy stomped into the kitchen.

Raven shook her head, obviously deciding not to ask, for which he was grateful. “Grab me one too.”

What would he do without Raven Reyes? Probably fall off the face of the earth and shoot into space. And then slam like a meteor into whatever rock he could inflict the most damage upon.

He cracked her beer open for her before handing it off. They both collapsed onto the couch, half a Raven between them. The cushion beneath him was very warm. He’d sat in the exact spot that Clarke had occupied for the last several hours.

That made him drain the entire can of beer in about three milliseconds.

Raven stared at him. “Jesus.”

“Your friend is going to be the death of me, Reyes.”

Raven snorted, then did a double take. “Hold up. Why did you only shave half your face?”

 

#

Bellamy had met Raven’s Zeke several times, and knew, in the most reasonable part of him, that the guy was solid. It was the unreasonable part of him that wanted to chain her fins to the floor when Raven announced she’d be spending Sunday night at his place.

“It’s your night off, Bellamy,” she said as she packed her bag. “Do something fun. Something that doesn’t involve glaring at me.”

Bellamy didn’t feel like having fun. He felt like getting into the Rover and driving it so blazingly fast that he actually turned back time.

Clarke had returned home well past noon. Bellamy had woken up at seven and run four miles and then eaten an entire bag of Cheetos in his room. The fucking Percy Jackson boxset was still next to his bed, and he was pretty sure it thought he was an idiot.

Raven clearly thought so too, because she rolled her eyes, muttered something under her breath, and went outside to wait for Zeke on the curb.

He was alone with Clarke again. Fantastic. He could hear the faint sounds of her music bleeding through the wall. She’d taken a shower somewhere around three and hadn’t emerged since.

When the sky darkened outside, Bellamy began a painful struggle. He was starving, and there was nothing but Cheetos in the house (Raven had gone to the supermarket last, of course). He had to order food or he’d probably die. But it was a prime asshole move not to order anything for Clarke when she was home. But to do that, he’d have to talk to Clarke. And it was a prime asshole move to talk to Clarke, after the fight they’d hard. Plus her door was shut. Plus she was playing Florence, which was her _fuck off_ music.

But what if she was hungry? Clarke couldn’t live on just Cheetos. Clarke liked poke bowls with bamboo rice, and crab handrolls, and artisanal burgers with house-made pickles.

But what if Clarke wasn’t planning to stay in tonight? Finn was undoubtedly the kind of guy who loved house-made pickles. Fuck, he probably made his own fucking pickles in his own fucking house. Bellamy would bet money that he brewed his own IPA.

Bellamy walked past her door four times before he finally said, “ _Fuck it_ ,” out loud, clenched his fists, and knocked.

“Clarke?”

The music switched off. Was that a good sign? A bad sign? Should he prepare for war?

The door cracked open, and she peered at him warily. She was in sweatpants and a sloppy ponytail. Definitely not heading out, then.

He felt a stupid, sweeping relief.

“Um,” he said. “I’m, uh. Gonna order some food. Do you want anything?”

He swore a year went by before she answered. He watched her face carefully, saw the indecision pinch her brow, saw the gears turn in her head. He saw her remember the Cheetos.

“Like what? Burgers?”

“No,” Bellamy said firmly.

“Then _what?_ ”

“Whatever you want, I guess.”

“Except burgers.”

“Forget it,” he said, turning around, but she stepped into the hall.

“No, wait. I’m sorry. I get crabby when I’m hungry. Do you want Japanese? Thai? Indian?”

“Raven hates the smell of Indian food,” Bellamy said automatically. It had long been a point of contention between them. On the official laminated charter of house rules, Raven had written, in bold, **NO INDIAN FOOD IN ANY BUILDING IN WHICH RAVEN REYES HAS TO LIVE THANK YOU EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY AND FOREVER.** Both Clarke and Bellamy had protested, to no avail.

There was a long pause.

“Raven isn’t here,” Clarke said slowly.

Bellamy turned to face her. She had a narrow, calculating look in her eyes, and she was smiling.

His mouth smiled back all on its own. “No. She isn’t.”

“She wouldn’t have to know. We could clean up.”

“You did buy a twelve-pack of Febreeze.”

“I wouldn’t tell her.”

“Neither would I.”

“We wouldn’t be doing anything _wrong_ ,” Clarke said. “Technically, for tonight, Raven lives at Zeke’s apartment. So technically, it’s not even breaking the rules if we order Indian food just for this one night.”

“Technically,” Bellamy said, “I hope you never run for president, because they are going to impeach the shit out of you.”

Clarke laughed, and it was the best sound Bellamy had heard in weeks.

 

#

It was a feast. It was a fucking Henry the Eighth banquet, if Henry the Eighth had eaten fish korma instead of whole swans or whatever. Bellamy had no clue what Henry the Eight ate, but he bet Clarke did, and resolved to ask her later.

They sat cross-legged on the floor of the living room, Clarke’s Starry Night at their backs, and spread their bounty of containers across the entire expanse of the coffee table.

“We’re never going to finish all this in one night,” Clarke said, piling chicken tikka masala onto her plate.

“I like a challenge.”

They were quiet as they stuffed their faces, laughing when the other let a groan of ecstasy escape. Clarke pursed her lips in Mrs. Weasleyish disapproval when he used his fingers to scoop the last cube of paneer out, and he laughed when the extreme spice of the lamb vindaloo made her eyes water.

It wasn’t until they were both bursting full, and the atmosphere was relaxed and slightly sleepy, that Bellamy decided not to be a wuss.

“About last night,” he said.

Clarke immediately stilled and did not look at him.

Bellamy took a wary breath. “Look. I know I can get…protective. _Over_ protective. It’s something I’m trying to work on.”

“Maybe work a bit harder,” Clarke said, but there was no malice in it.

His lips quirked. “You sound like O. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I guess I just…want good things for the people I care about, and I don’t like to see them hurt. That’s all.”

She stared into her lap, and Bellamy wiped his sweating palms on the knees of his jeans.

When Clarke met his gaze at last, she was perfectly composed. “I understand that. And thank you for your apology. But you don’t have to get protective of _me_.”

He heard her unspoken words loud and clear. No one took better care of Clarke than Clarke.

That made him feel a bit empty, but shit if he knew why.

But then she looked away, like she couldn’t maintain her composure, and he saw her teeth dig into her bottom lip. “Thank you, though. For trying. For saying you care.”

Bellamy blinked in surprise. _Shit._ He had said that, hadn’t he? He had said that, _out loud, to her,_ without even knowing. Fuck fuck shit.

Clarke slid a look at him and laughed. “Oh, my God. You look horrified. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

He forced his voice light and casual, made him himself smirk. “Good. Can’t ruin my reputation as an anti-Clarker, after all.”

She shook her head, but her smile widened.

Bellamy forced himself to look away. “I guess we should clean up. It might take all twelve bottles of Febreeze to undo this.”

Bellamy expected her to leap to her feet—there were few things Clarke loved better than wielding a Febreeze bottle like a blowtorch—but she hesitated. Her fingers played with the drawstring of her sweatpants, pulling it backwards and forwards like she was nervous. “We don’t have to right away. I mean, we could—” She stopped. She was staring into her lap again, and her blonde hair hid her face.

“We could what?” said Bellamy carefully.

“We could watch some TV. Or something.”

“I like TV,” Bellamy said, and wondered if a more banal sentence had ever been uttered.

But Clarke looked up very fast at that, a smile flashing on her lips. “I, too, like TV.”

Just like that they were on the couch again, one Raven between them, Clarke bundled protectively beneath a blanket like it was a fortress protecting her from liking him. The lights were turned off. Netflix was loaded onto the TV. And then there was silence.

“What should we watch?” Clarke asked.

“I don’t know. Pick anything.” Bellamy could barely focus on the screen. Why were even the simplest things with this girl so incredibly fraught?

“I can’t just _pick_ _anything_. What if I pick something you don’t like?”

“I like everything.”

“Oh, yeah? What about finishing that season of _Emergency Room Disasters_? The one that nearly made you puke?”

“Maybe not that.”

Clarke huffed. “That’s not helpful.”

Bellamy yanked the remote from her hand and clicked at random. “There. That one.”

Clarke let out a choking sound. “I have no desire to watch _The Great British Bake Off_.”

“Tough, princess. ‘Cause that’s what we’re watching.”

Clarke crossed her arms. “You’re going to hate it. _I’m_ going to hate it.”

Bellamy became instantly determined to enjoy the show more than he’d ever enjoyed anything in his life, just to spite her.

Four episodes later, he’d forgotten his resolution. He’d forgotten everything but the fact that Catherine’s caramel had just crystallized _again_ , and everything was terrible.

“Again? _Again_?” Clarke seized her hair. “ _Catherine!_ They are going to kick you out of England, you failure of a person!”

Why were people always going on about how serious Clarke was? Why had Bellamy thought that for so long?

 “Oh God,” Bellamy said. “Alfred’s cake.”

Her eyes widened. “What about his cake?”

“It’s going to collapse.”

Clarke gasped. “No, it’s not! Why do you think it’s going to collapse? Alfred is too nice to have his cake collapse! He rescues corgis! He lives in a village!”

“Look at it. He’s icing it when it’s warm. The judge said not to ice it when it was warm. He spent too long on that—that creamy stuff in the middle—and now he’s building it too late and—”

They both swore roundly as six frosted layers of sponge slid and toppled off the stand. The music thundered dismally like someone had just been executed.

“ _Nooooooo_ ,” Clarke wailed, her hands over her mouth.

Bellamy looked at her, pale and round-eyed and utterly absorbed, and realized something very obvious and extremely confusing. They had become friends.

Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin had secretly, accidentally, become friends.

The thought made him strangely uncomfortable—like he’d betrayed Raven by letting it happen behind her back. Raven wanted them to get along, sure; she wanted them to stop sniping at each other every ten seconds.

But what would she make of this? Would she even know how to handle… _this?_

Actually, he knew how she’d handle _The Great British Bake Off_ : she’d hate it. She wouldn’t make it through one episode.

“Oh, my God. Hattie and Rupert are helping Alfred piece his cake back together! These are the _loveliest people alive_ ,” Clarke said fervently, her blue eyes shining.

Yeah. Bellamy definitely was never telling Raven about this.

 

#

Somehow it was four am and Clarke was already emailing her professor to lie that she was dreadfully ill and wouldn’t make his seminar the next morning. They had emptied the Febreeze bottle, and now the living room smelled like Meadow and Rain. Well, and vindaloo. There was no escaping it. It had seeped into the very molecules of the room. They lived in a damp meadow of curry.

Raven was going to kill them.

Somehow, Bellamy couldn’t bring himself to care.

“God, I’m tired.” Clarke leaned into the pillows and shut her eyes. The banquet was safely stored in the fridge. The TV was finally turned off, and the silence was thick and woolly. “I don’t think I’ve ever _been_ this tired. Not since the time Wells and I played the same Monopoly game until five in the morning and then I had to be at swim practice at six.”

Bellamy, who’d also been one second from dozing off, lifted his head to stare at her. Raven had once, briefly, mentioned that Clarke’s childhood best friend had been named Wells, and that he had died. But Bellamy had never, in four years, heard Clarke so much as say his name.

He felt like he’d just been dumped onto a road littered with landmines. Where the fuck did he step? What did he say?

“You guys sure knew how to party,” he said, and instantly wanted to punch himself.

But a sleepy smile stretched across her face, and her eyes stayed shut. “Oh, for sure. That was me in high school. Total party animal.”

Bellamy opened his mouth to let out another sarcastic comment, but hesitated. “I don’t know. I bet you guys had fun. I bet it was a party for you. Doesn’t really matter what you do, just who you do it with, right?”

She lifted her head as if startled. Her blue eyes no longer seemed tired. They cut into him so hard that his breath caught. They were both sitting sideways on the couch, angled to face one another. Her blanket was draped over his knees. It was so quiet.

There was not even half a Raven between them.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice even huskier than normal. “That’s…that’s completely right.”

He couldn’t think. Her lashes were very long.

“I miss having a person like that,” Clarke said softly. “The person who centers you. You know—a partner. The person you’d do anything for.”

Why did his brain feel jammed? Why did her words make him want to lean closer and—do _what?_ Tuck the blanket around her more tightly? Break Finn Collins’ nose?

Kiss her?

“You know,” she continued, with no idea that she was fraying the last remnants of his sanity, “the way you have Octavia.”

Bellamy’s brow knit. She was right. Octavia did center him. Everything he did, he did for his sister. But something about her words felt wrong.

“You’re so…ride or die,” Clarke said, and a smile that was almost fond lit her face. “I want to be like that. I think I _could_ be like that, with the right people. That’s one of the things Raven told me about you when she was trying to convince me to like you. That you’d do anything for your friends, and especially your sister.”

Suddenly Bellamy realized what it was that hadn’t clicked. He _was_ ride or die. He’d do anything on earth for Octavia, but he didn’t want O to do anything on earth for him in return. He was meant to protect her. It wasn’t a partnership. It wasn’t what Clarke had said she missed. It was still something vital to him—and it was something Clarke didn’t have either—but it wasn’t the same.

What would it be like to have someone who’d destroy the world for you?

He felt, suddenly, deeply and painfully lonely. Like he was one of the last humans in the universe.

Which was ridiculous.

“Bellamy?” Clarke said quietly. Her head was tilted in concern, her bright eyes fixed on his with the kind of intensity usually reserved for mental health professionals. “Are you okay?”

Jesus. When was the last time someone had asked him that?

When had she gotten so dangerously close? There was grapefruit everywhere. Pink and bright and girly and Clarkeish and fucking up his entire nervous system.

He needed to go the fuck to _sleep._

“’Course,” he said gruffly.

“You have vindaloo on your cheek,” she said.

His brain wasn’t working properly. His voice felt jagged. “Of course I do. I probably have vindaloo on every part of me. I think I am vindaloo.”

“Well, I’m not checking every part. But you do have some on your cheek.”

Her fingers reached up and softly brushed his skin.

It felt like a power surge. Like a tripped circuit breaker. Everything inside him went a little bit haywire—his nerves spiked, his heart tumbled. His eyelids fluttered, and he swallowed.

Her hand lingered. Her breath caught, and she looked bewildered.

Her knee knocked into his. It would have been a friendly, easy accident if they didn’t both jump like two live wires coming into contact. He felt like he’d been cattle prodded.

Now they were both sitting poker straight and staring, two whole Ravens between them.

She looked away first. “I—I’m beat. We should go to bed.” His eyebrows lifted, and her cheeks flushed grapefruit pink. “ _Separately. Obviously._ ”

He laughed, and some of the tension drained away. Thank God, because it had been choking him alive.

They turned off the lights and headed down the hall. Her room was first, but she paused in her doorway, and he nearly had to Kitty Pryde himself through the wall in order to slip past without touching her.

“Remember,” she said, “we decided that you’re the who'll explain to Raven the leftovers in the fridge. You’re the one she’s least likely to kill.”

He smiled. “Good night, princess.”

She smiled, tucked her hair behind her ear, and vanished into her room.

He rubbed his cheek where the vindaloo stain had been and felt the ghost of her fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *zooms in six months late with an update* OH HI HOW'S IT GOING HOW'VE YOU BEEN


	6. I Am Become Death Warmed Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everybody gets the flu. The very romantic flu.

Finn was late again.

Clarke was not. Clarke was never late. She tended to get a panicky, crunched-up feeling in her belly when there was even the _chance_ of being late—misplaced keys, a stuck traffic light, a blocked highway exit—and did everything in her power to be punctual. She always returned her keys to the keyring by the front door. She always left twenty minutes earlier than normal people would. She always checked her route online ahead of time.

Finn was late.

She stood in the dimly lit waiting area of the restaurant, dressed in exactly the kind of date outfit that Bellamy had had such difficulty describing the last time. Her foot kept tapping impatiently.

Raven was always complaining about Clarke’s tapping. “It makes you look like a stern headmistress. Like you’re about to lock someone in the chokey.” Clarke wasn’t even aware she was doing it half the time.

But now she was getting looks from the other diners waiting for a table, so she made herself stop. She pulled out her cell for the sixteenth—seventeenth—time.

Nothing.

When she’d first arrived, she had been hungry enough to beg the hostess to seat her alone.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t seat you until the whole party is present,” the hostess had said, bright and chirpy, and Clarke had imagined whapping her over the head with the menus. “Will the rest of your party be arriving shortly?”

Wasn’t that the million-dollar question?

 Not to mention she’d called her _ma’am._ How old did Clarke come across? Sometimes she didn’t know if she was twenty-two or forty-two.

Clarke was no longer hungry. She was just…well. That tight, crunching feeling was doing a number on her insides, that was all she knew.

Finn would never stand her up on purpose. Finn wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t cruel. He liked late nights spent talking through his feelings, and cooking authentic pasta recipes together out of the big, tattered Italian cookbook he’d found at a used bookshop. He had soft hair and soft hands and had probably never punched a person (whereas Clarke had actually _seen_ Bellamy punch people. With her own eyes.)

And yet Finn was late.

Beyond the barricade of the hostess stand, the restaurant was a riot of laughter and wine glasses clinking. It smelled like fresh bread and olive oil. Something hard and bitter was rising in her throat. She hoped it was fire, but she was pretty sure it was tears.

She checked her phone for the eighteenth time.

 

**Clarke 6:46 PM**

On your way?

 

**Clarke 6:55 PM**

Hey, are you almost here?

 

**Clarke 7:01 PM**

Finn, let me know when you’re close. They won’t seat me alone.

 

**Clarke 7:08 PM**

??

 

**Clarke 7:12 PM**

Has something happened?

 

**Clarke 7:17 PM**

Where are you???

 

Wow. She HATED the girl who had sent these messages. She hated her _so much._

 _This isn’t right_ , whispered a voice in her mind. _This isn’t good. You don’t deserve this._ The voice was deep, male, and annoyingly familiar, but she wouldn’t think about that. She would only think about the fact that right now, this time, with anxiety gnawing her gut and tears choking her throat, she agreed with the voice.

And this time she was going to listen.

She glanced at the hostess stand. The chirpy girl was whispering with two of the waitstaff, a menu held up to block her lips. All three of their curious gazes cut to Clarke.

 _Fuck this._ Clarke jammed her phone in her purse and shoved through the doors.

Somewhere in the back of her thoughts, the voice cheered.

 

#

Finn lived in a fourth-floor walk-up just off campus. Clarke positively blazed up all four flights and was about to knock when something stilled her hand. Intuition? Ruthlessness? It was both. It was neither. Her stomach twisted tight.

She snagged the spare key from under the doormat and slipped inside.

(She was always telling Finn about that key. Did he want to be _murdered?_ Did he think burglars were incapable of _lifting mats?_ What kind of protection was an inch of fabric?)

Finn’s apartment was just as she’d last seen it. Except for the things that glaringly, comically did not belong. The things he did not own. The things that were most definitely someone else’s.

Clarke realized how much she’d honestly thought there _had_ been some kind of emergency, and how much she’d really expected to find him hunched over the toilet, incapacitated by food poisoning. Stranded on the road after a fender bender. On the phone with a dying relative. Anything.

Instead, it was…this.

It was so common. So expected. And yet she hadn’t expected it at all.

She felt like someone in a movie, bursting into the bedroom, hearing the double gasps, seeing the two figures gaping back at her. In movies, though, they were always caught right in the act, still wrapped up in sheets. Clearly, they had since finished, and the girl—whom she did not recognize—was already wearing one of Finn’s shirts.

There was yelling. Finn was in front of her, hands up, trying to explain. Clarke didn’t even know what she said. She felt like a stranger in her own body. She was aware of the girl throwing a pillow at Finn and shrieking, “You have a girlfriend?! You _dick!_ ”, which Clarke thought was a nice moment of solidarity, especially when the girl escalated and threw Finn’s authentic Italian cookbook at him next.

Clarke’s feet were carrying her away, and she was practically sprinting from the bedroom, past his kitchen counter, toward the door, but Finn kept pace.

“—I’m so sorry, Clarke, I never—you were never supposed to know. I want to be with you, but I thought you were pulling away from me. I didn’t know what to do. You’re always so _guarded_ , Clarke, and sometimes it’s like trying to break through a brick wall just to get to know you—”

He followed her down all four flights of stairs. He wasn’t even wearing shoes, but he came with her outside. He hovered in front of her as she marched toward her parked car, blocking the door.

“Talk to me,” Finn begged. “You have to talk to me.”

“I really don’t.”

“We can get past this. Let me try to explain. If we just talk—”

“You have done plenty of talking for the both of us, I think,” Clarke said. “Now _move_.”

“See? This is what I meant. It’s this wall you put up. This armor. I want to get past that armor, Clarke, because you’re an amazing girl under there, but you just don’t let anybody—”

“If you don’t let me into my car, I will call Bellamy Blake and have him run you over with his Rover.”

That worked. Finn, too, had seen Bellamy Blake punch people with his own eyes.

Clarke wrenched open the driver door, sat, and yanked it shut. Finn stood sadly in the street, staring down at her with tragic, wounded eyes.

“I love you, Clarke.”

Clarke did not answer. She turned on the ignition, and at the roar of the engine, he finally moved out of the way, and she escaped.

At the first red light, she burst into tears.

 

#

Raven and Bellamy were both reading at separate ends of the couch when Clarke got home. They looked so cozily domestic, so peaceful, that she wished she were invisible so she could slip past them without disturbing them. She felt too jagged with damage to be inflicted on anyone tonight.

But of course they both looked up as she came through the front door. Raven had an enormous Chemistry textbook leaning against her knees. One hand was digging around in a bag of Pirate’s Booty. Bellamy wore his James Potter reading glasses, and Clarke’s heart gave a painful kick.

His brows knit in a frown at the sight of her.

“What’s wrong?” Raven demanded at once.

For a second, Clarke considered lying, or at least begging off and retreating to her room. Instead, the entire story burst out of her almost without thought. Every single detail.

Her roommates gaped at her. Raven hissed with outrage at all the right places, and Bellamy’s brow grew stormier with every word.

“Fucking hell.” Raven was on her feet, tugging Clarke toward the couch. “Come sit. I’m going to kick his ass. That _shithead._ Fucking _hell._ ”

Bellamy shuffled, making room for her, as Clarke was forcibly yanked to a seat in the very middle. The couch was warm from their bodies and perfectly smushed in, like it was hugging her. It was a ridiculous thought, but it almost made Clarke smile.

Bellamy pulled off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“I suppose _you_ feel vindicated,” Clarke said, a little sourly.

She should have listened to him. _God_ , she hated being wrong. Clarke expected Bellamy to let out more than a few _I told you so’s_ , because she certainly would have been saying them had she been in his place. Clarke loved being right.

But instead Bellamy sat up, looked at her very levelly, and said, “I will help you bury the body.” She opened her mouth, but he kept going. “No. Scratch that. I’ll help you kill him. Got a weapon of choice?”

She stared. It was a _crazy_ thing to say in that very serious, slightly scary way. She had a sudden image of the horrified look that would have overtaken Wells’ face at Bellamy’s promise. Wells had been a lot of wonderful things, but vengeance killer was definitely not one of them. He would not have even joked about it.

“Can I help?” Raven said, sounding eager.

“Of—of course,” Clarke stammered, overwhelmed.

“Nice!” Raven pumped a fist. “Murder buddies!”

“Murder buddies.” Bellamy’s smile was a slow journey of warmth that lit up his face, lingering in his eyes. A slow dawn. Deep folds bracketing his mouth, eyes crinkling.

It was the kind of expression she’d liked to sketch, once upon a time.

Clarke’s traitorous mouth smiled back before she remembered she was annoyed with him for being right when she was wrong. But she was already feeling the pressure of tears fade from her throat.

“I’ve never had a murder buddy,” she said. “I like the sound of that.”

 

Raven and Bellamy shared their dinner and chose something extremely un-romantic for them to watch. By the end of the night, Clarke felt lighter than she could have believed possible. But then the TV was switched off, and the lights were dimmed, and she was alone in her bed in the dark. And she was just Clarke again—Clarke, the girl in armor, who was sick and empty and hollow and lonely. Lonely, unlovable, and unknowable.

 

#

Three days later, Clarke emerged from her room to hear Bellamy and Raven whispering urgently to each other behind the open fridge door.

“You have to tell her, she’ll listen to you—”

“ _Me?_ When in four years of living with Clarke has she ever listened to _me?_ ”

“We can’t just let her walk around like that—”

“Like what?” Clarke said.

There was silence, and then the fridge door slammed shut. Clarke did not like the guilty looks on their faces at all.

“Like _what?_ ”

Raven shot Bellamy an entreating look.  Bellamy shot one right back. There was at least ten seconds of stalemate before Bellamy let out a growl and said, “ _Fine_. Clarke—we’re worried about you. The thing is—you look—”

Raven smacked the back of her hand against his stomach. “Not look! We are not criticizing the way she looks!”

“I wasn’t!”

“You _were._ ”

Clarke tucked a lock of hair behind her ear defensively. Shame and anger burned her cheeks. She had been trying so hard this week. She had been determined, after Finn, not to look even a little bit like a girl with a broken heart. She hadn’t missed a single class, or a single shower, or a single yoga session. She had on a full face of makeup. She wasn’t listening to _any_ Adele. Well, not very much Adele. And only really, really quietly.

“I am fine,” Clarke said as evenly as she could. “Just because Finn cheated on me does not mean I am not fine.”

Raven and Bellamy looked confused.

“What does Fuckboy have to do with this?” Raven asked. “We’re talking about the fact that you’re walking around town looking like you’ve come down with the bubonic plague.”

“Like I—what?”

“As someone who’s studied Proto-Renaissance Art until her eyes bled,” said Bellamy wryly, “I’d think you of all people would know what the bubonic plague is.”

“Of course I know what the plague is. I just don’t have it. I don’t get sick.”

Her roommates exchanged a look positively thick with meaning.

“I don’t,” Clarke said firmly, crossing her arms. “I haven’t had so much as a cold in years.”

Bellamy folded his arms right back. “Your eyes are bloodshot.”

“And your nose is _bright pink_ ,” Raven said. “It is _dripping._ ”

That was one hundred percent the result of late-night Adele sessions, but she was absolutely not admitting it. “Look, I get you guys are trying to be caring, or whatever, but honestly. This isn’t the way. Now stop blocking the fridge so I can reheat my lunch leftovers.”

“Which are?” Bellamy said, in an irritatingly knowing voice.

“…Soup.”

Bellamy and Raven exchanged victorious expressions that made Clarke want to pour her soup over their heads.

“I _told_ you,” Clarke said, elbowing past them and yanking open the refrigerator, “I don’t get—get—”

And then she sneezed. Very dramatically. So dramatically that Bellamy and Raven both leapt back like a bomb had been detonated.

There was silence.

“Shit,” Clarke said.

“Bed. _Right_ now.” Other people’s best friends would have been gentle, but that was not Raven Reyes. She seized Clarke by the wrists and dragged her out of the kitchen like a tugboat. “Sweatpants. Fluids. Medicine. No class. _Sleep_.”

“But I have a paper—and I promised Harper I’d go over her French lit—”

“ _Sleep_ ,” Raven said, and it sounded like a threat. “Sleep, fuzzy slippers, vitamin C, the whole shebang. Bellamy, reheat that soup for her.”

“And sanitize the kitchen floor,” he said.

Clarke twisted in the doorway to frown at him, not sure if she was insulted or gratified by this Clarke-like cleanliness.

He smirked. “You’ve left a wake of destruction, Typhoid Clarke. I wouldn’t be surprised if half your seminars call in sick tomorrow.”

 

#

Turned out, it was Clarke’s Baroque Art professor herself who cancelled, leaving Clarke free to blob about in bed without guilt. Except she did feel guilty, and she had mountains of work to do that she really would have preferred to be doing. And she would have been, if Bellamy hadn’t confiscated her schoolbooks.

“I’m keeping these in a safe location,” he said, holding one of her binders high above his head and well out of her reach, which was rude. “And you can’t have them back until your face is a normal color again.”

No matter how much she argued, pleaded, and yelled, he hadn’t budged. Clarke suspected there were no three people more stubborn in the world than her and her roomfriends.

It had been an incredibly long time she’d been taken care of.

She almost didn’t remember what it felt like. But Raven made her soup after soup. One of the recipes she even invented herself, which meant it was likely poisonous, but Clarke was still touched. Bellamy came back from CVS with about fourteen boxes of Kleenex and placed them strategically around the house so Clarke could access them at any point in the day. The two of them even washed her bedding, which in Clarke’s eyes made them eligible for sainthood.

Clarke went hunting for something slouchy and soft to wear and ended up pulling an enormous, warm sweatshirt straight from the dryer and directly over her head. It had to be Bellamy’s, since it would easily fit six Ravens inside it, but she didn’t care. It was hers now. She toppled back into her bed, pulled the long, fleecy sleeves over her hands, and smiled. She loved this sweater. She wanted to _be_ this sweater. She already felt less sick while wearing it. But she was still too sick to bother thinking about why.

Several hours later, she emerged like a bear from hibernation for some tea. Bellamy was in the kitchen, already pouring out the hot water. He stopped at the sight of her in his sweater, a funny look on his face.

“Oh.” Clarke flushed. Well, flushed some more. “Do you want—?”

“Nah.” A small, unreadable smile tugged at his mouth. “You keep it.”

She did. For five straight days.

When Bellamy noticed she was running a fever, he refilled her Nalgene water bottle to the brim and threw their largest, fluffiest blanket over her. Clarke made a catlike noise of content and burrowed into it.

She felt his weight sink into the couch. “Comfy there, princess?” There was a laugh in his voice.

Clarke would have been embarrassed if she hadn’t felt so shitty. Clearly she was delirious, because she mumbled, “Thank you” without any sarcasm and fell asleep with her fuzzy-unicorn-socked feet pressed against his leg.

It really wasn’t a surprise when Bellamy woke up sneezing.

Within a few hours they had morphed from murder buddies to fever buddies. Raven had quarantined them on the couch and refused to enter the living room any longer. She put food on a tray and slid it through the kitchen doorway with her foot.

“I have _two_ graded labs next week,” she said. “ _Two_. I am not getting sick.”

“You definitely are.” Bellamy hugged a vomit bucket to his stomach, looking far more miserable than Clarke did. “If I’m going down, I’m taking everybody with me.”

“How heroic,” Clarke said from deep within the hood of Bellamy’s sweatshirt.

“It’s every man for himself now, princess. Law of the jungle.”

“Law of the sick ward,” Raven said, and squirted half a bottle of Purell into her palms.

 

#

Clarke still felt (and looked, if she was being honest) like she’d been hit by a truck, but Bellamy looked like he’d been hit by a planet. He was sweating and shivering very dramatically at the other end of the couch, and his curls were lank with sweat.

Clarke tugged her fuzzy blanket around her shoulders and shuffled over. “Bellamy. Open your mouth for a sec.”

“You are not feeding me soup,” he croaked.

“You’re right. I’m not. Now open your mouth.”

He didn’t. Clarke let out a thoroughly exasperated, only slightly mucus-y sound and pinched his nose.

His mouth popped open, and she shoved the thermometer in.

He was obviously sick, because he didn’t immediately try to kill her. He just shut his eyes and mumbled something about “Princess Nurse Ratchet,” which made Clarke giggle (she was clearly on the brink of death too).

“It’s Ratched, Bellamy.”

“Princess Dictator.” The thermometer bobbed against his chapped lips.

It beeped, and Clarke removed it. “Oh man. You’re at 102. That’s really hot, Bellamy.”

“Knew you thought I was hot,” he said, his eyes still closed.

Clarke laughed out loud. “Why are you only funny when you’re delirious?”

She’d never know what Bellamy’s comeback was. Instead of answering, he lurched upright, seized his bucket, and threw up. Clark rubbed a hand against his back, up and down, slow and soothing. His t-shirt was damp.

“You okay?” she said.

“Nnnnngh,” Bellamy replied.

She had clean towels and water ready. She pressed them into his hands and carefully stood up—she was still pretty wobbly—and gave him a few moments. Then she took his bucket away, rinsed it (she was pretty immune to grossness by now) and returned with a damp towel and fresh water.

Bellamy took the water gratefully. “God. I hope Raven didn’t hear me do that, or she’s going to buy herself a fucking Hazmat suit.”

“Raven’s not here.”

Raven had been on campus all day, no doubt infecting scores of students. Clarke sighed. She’d tried to explain to Raven how quarantines really worked, but Raven was convinced that she could will the germs not to work through sheer stubbornness and grit.

Bellamy shivered even harder.

“Bellamy,” Clarke said, “I think you need a doctor.”

“No way.”

“I know you hate help of any kind. Some stupid, male thing, no doubt, where you want to man your way through infection, or something—”

“Actually, it’s because my insurance is shit. Doctors are expensive, princess.”

Clarke felt a lick of hot shame and looked away. She’d grown up in a world where good medical care was a given, not a privilege. It had been such a bubble, and she hated herself for it.

But still. There was no doubt that if Bellamy got any sicker, he’d need one. But she could tell by the iron set of his jaw and the glint in his eyes that it was non-negotiable.

So she doctored him.

Gently she asked her way through his symptoms, one by one. Headache? Muscle aches? Cough? Congestions? Sore throat? Neck pain? How much? At the end, she was relieved. He would feel like shit, but she guessed he was at the peak of it. With rest, fluids, and Tylenol, he’d be fine.

He’d lain back down on the couch now. His long, lean frame took up nearly all of it, and his shirt had ridden up, exposing a slice of hard, brown stomach. Clarke hastily threw the blanket around him

“You should be a doctor.” Bellamy shut his eyes, his freckles standing out like fleck of paint against his flu pallor. “Why aren’t you a doctor?”

“I almost was. My mother is a doctor.”

“No wonder you’re good at it.”

Clarke said nothing, hoping he’d drop it.

“So why aren’t you?” he said, because Bellamy never did what she wanted.

“I like healing people. I like helping people. But I don’t want to be…” She couldn’t finish it. She felt the wild urge to escape.

Bellamy pulled his knees up to his chest and shivered. He looked impossibly young to her. This was a Bellamy she’d never known before: vulnerable Bellamy. Armorless Bellamy.

“It makes sense,” he said.

“What does?”

“That you’d want to be our own person instead of a copy of someone else. Art is just your thing. And it’s such a surprise, coming out of you.”

Clarke felt strange and unmoored, and she didn’t know if it was the cold medicine or her own fever or what. How had he known what she’d been unable to say?

“What do you mean?” Even her voice sounded strange.

“You’re so—you know. _Princess_.” He was mumbling now, softly fading into sleep. “But then there’s this other side. It’s a surprise. Brave of you to go with the surprise. I could see you in cold white halls. Scalpels. But instead—it’s brave. Surprising.”

“I’m not brave,” Clarke said, very quietly. “Not anymore.”

Bellamy let out a very loud scoffing sound that could not be good for his health. His breathing evened out, and his long lashes fluttered and stilled.

He seemed to have finally fallen asleep again. His brow was glistening, so she picked up the damp towel and gently dabbed. A lock of his swirling, Van Gogh Starry Night curls had fallen across his forehead. She brushed the curl away, and somehow her finger swooped along it, sketching the soft curve.

His dark eyes flickered open. Clarke whipped her hand back.

Bellamy’s eyes were glassy with fever but intent. Focused. She stumbled for something to say and conjured up nothing. She was horribly aware of her hands.

The front door bashed open, and they both nearly fell off the couch.

Raven stomped inside, her ponytail ragged, her limp worse than ever, her book bag trailing. Her nose was red. She looked…well. Like she’d be hit by a bus.

“You owe me twenty bucks,” Bellamy said in satisfaction.

“Yeah, yeah.” Raven kicked off her shoes and wedged herself between Bellamy and Clarke. “Shove over and give me some of that cold medicine.”

“Another one bites the dust,” Bellamy sang—croaked— and Raven shoved him.

 _We live in way too close proximity_ , Clarke thought as she brought Raven the sample platter smorgasbord of medicine they’d accumulated over the last couple days. _The wildfire spread of germs in this house is downright alarming._

 

#

If they had lived in a more contentious period of history, their plague house would have been condemned, or cursed, or marked with a big black X. Both the university and the bar might as well have been on fire for the next four days for all the effect they were having on Clarke, Bellamy, and Raven’s lives. They were in total quarantine, everyone felt miserable, and no one cared about anything any longer. Clarke had not left the house in a week. No one had done the dishes. The chore chart was forgotten. Chaos was their master.

Clarke hated it. She could feel her energy creeping back. Tomorrow she’d impose order. Tomorrow she’d whip the house into some kind of emergency organizational state. She’d develop a proper nursing system so that neither Raven nor Bellamy were ever un-cared for, where at least one person’s pajamas were always being washed, where the pantry was fully stocked with soup, and Clarke would research other foods that were gentle on sick stomachs, and she’d look up the restaurant that delivered the best version of it, and she’d disinfect every surface…

And then she fell asleep, and realized she was not about to do any of that.

Harper and Monty brought over a tureen of broth and news from the outside world. Clarke was the only one well enough to open the door, but did not venture outside, and they were definitely not about to come in. Harper had her shirt collar pulled over her mouth and nose.

“God, it’s like poison fog in there,” she said. “I can practically smell it.”

“It’s just the flu,” Clarke said, painfully aware that she had not washed her hair in three days.

Monty shoved the broth into her arms. “My grandmother swears by that broth, says it cures everything from flu to broken bones. That’s probably not true, but don’t take chances. Make sure you guys drink it all. Because, no offense, you look like death warmed over.”

Clarke pursed her lips.

“But like, nice death warmed over,” Monty said quickly. “Strong, attractive, intellectual death warmed over. The good kind of death. You know.”

“This had better be some broth,” Clarke said, but she was smiling.

She wasn’t used to being taken care of.

Clarke wasn’t sure what was in Monty’s grandmother’s magic stew, but after several servings she really was starting to feel better. She was also starting to feel very bored.

Raven and Bellamy were still completely incapacitated, so there was no one to stop her from tracking down her schoolbooks (Bellamy had hidden them on top of the refrigerator) and completing all her schoolwork. But she was still faced with the prospect of several more days of house arrest with nothing at all to do, and she was chafing.

( _She_ knew how quarantines worked. She wasn’t going back into the general public until everyone in her household had been fever-free for forty-eight hours.)

This would be precisely the kind of circumstance in which the old Clarke would have painted to pass the time, but Clarke wasn’t brave enough to do that anymore. She just…studied the art that other people painted.

Clarke walked past Bellamy’s open door, and something caught her eye. It was a Percy Jackson boxset on his bedside table. She remembered promising him, sitting in the Rover dipping French fries into milkshakes, that she would read it. She glanced at the living room, but Bellamy was still bundled with Raven on the couch, so she darted into his bedroom and stole the books.

And that’s how she accidentally read all five books at once.

Clarke had never seen Bellamy _delighted_ before. He had a million questions for her. What did she think? Who was her favorite? “I mean, obviously it’s Annabeth, why did I even ask? But what do you think about the ways he modernized the myths and brought them into contemporary culture? And isn’t Percy such a sarcastic shithead, but—you know—still a hero? Did you know I was him for Halloween three years in a row and…” Bellamy trailed off. “And, never tell anyone that on pain of death.”

She didn’t even recognize him. He was a totally different person when he talked about these books—a person who was possibly high on cold medicine, but still. He was passionate about Greek mythology in a way Clarke envied. She wished he could have gone to grad school like he wanted. He would have been brilliant.

Clarke hoped that Octavia understood how much he’d sacrificed for his sister. Clarke was glad he’d only deferred one semester and not a whole year. Or forever.

“You are such a Seaweed Brain,” Clarke said, handing him a mug of tea, and Bellamy’s smile was bright enough to break any heart in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The flu is, obviously, a shipper.


	7. My Ex’s Big Fat Lesbian Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a wedding. Clarke needs a date. I WONDER WHO SHE’LL GO WITH.
> 
> It's just a big bisexual nightmare.

The invitation could not have arrived at a worse time.

Not that there was a _good_ time for your ex to get married and invite you to watch. But…well. It could have happened _not now_.

Clarke had been sitting at the kitchen counter, glowering at the open invitation, for several minutes when Raven walked in and cast her a look of deepest concern.

“Are you trying to burn a hole in that? Or move it around the room like Matilda?”

Clarke said nothing.

“Is that a jury duty summons? Why do you look like that?” Raven moved to read over her shoulder. Her ponytail swung into the back of Clarke’s head. “Oh. _No_.”

“Yes,” Clarke said tightly.

“I mean, you pretty much have to go.”

“I know I have to go.”

“Wait. The wedding is _next week?_ How in the hell—”

“Obviously someone cancelled,” Clarke said, because she knew intimately how this old, snobbish world worked, “and rather than suffer the _horror_ of an empty seat, a pity invite was deployed.”

Raven whistled. “Shit. And— _fuck._ She actually gave you a plus one.”

“Political warfare,” Clarke said.

“That is diabolical.”

There was silence. Clarke kept glowering.

There was a crinkling sound as Raven plunged a noisy hand into a bag of Doritos.

“You know I can’t go with you,” Raven said after a moment. “My first exam’s that Monday. I need to study all weekend.”

Clarke dropped her forehead to the countertop and groaned. Raven patted her shoulder sympathetically. Clarke tried not to think about the orange Dorito fingerprints now burned into her jacket, but she couldn’t help it. Lately, all she could see were Dorito fingerprints. Not only was the glass half empty, but the water was murky, lukewarm, and probably just LaCroix masquerading as perfectly good drinking water.

Finn had sure chosen a swell time to _suck_.

If only this invite had come when she still had a boyfriend, a built-in plus one she could cling to and show off and say to everyone SEE! HERE IS SOMEONE WHO LOVES CLARKE. CLARKE, WHO IS VERY LOVABLE AND SUCCESSFUL, BTW, EVEN IF SHE’S NOT THE ONE IN A WEDDING DRESS. Not that she wanted Finn again—though a treacherous. less-evolved part of her did. If only she could go to Lexa’s wedding at a time when she felt worthy, and _together_ , and not like a forgotten piece of candy that had been left to melt in someone’s purse.

If only she weren’t so tired.

It would be absolute, searing torture to watch Lexa get married.

How was she supposed to raise a glass to love? Now? _Alone?_

“You’ll find someone,” Raven said. “But only if you get your head off the counter, because you’re going to flatten your skull.”

Clarke sat up. “Who exactly is going to go with me?”

“Harper? I’m sure she’d love to get dressed up and hit an open bar.”

“She and Monty already have plans. Some seven-and-a-half-month anniversary dinner.”

“Revolting,” Raven said through a mouthful of Doritos, wrinkling her nose, and Clarke remembered why Raven was her best and only friend. “Jasper?”

“I’m not babysitting Jasper by myself.”

Raven laughed. “Fair. And I won’t do you the disservice of suggesting Murphy.”

“The night would end with me refusing to bail him out of jail.”

They looked at each other.

“We need more friends,” Raven said.

“And less emotional baggage,” Clarke said, shoving the invitation away from her.

 

#

In the end, of course, Clarke only had one option: the worst one.

One of the things Clarke hated most was a last resort. She was a planner, a plotter, a schemer—she liked escaping from impossible situations. When backed into a corner, she liked to find secret back exits. If given the choice between A and B, she always chose C. Clarke liked to _find a way_.

But there was no way out of this.

Clarke ambushed him as he was passing her room. At the sound of his footsteps in the hall she yanked open the door, and he stopped in his tracks.

Bellamy’s eyes skimmed her cloud blue pajama bottoms, but when they reached her (slightly scanty) camisole top he jerked his gaze away very quickly.

“Hi,” Clarke said. “Can I talk to you for a second? I have something…strange to ask of you.”

Bellamy’s lips pressed. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t leave, either.

There was nothing for it.

“Would you come with me as my date to my ex-girlfriend’s wedding next weekend?”

It was painfully clear that Bellamy was not at all aware of what to do with this. If Clarke’s stomach weren’t clenched so tight with nerves, she would have smiled at the outright alarm that flashed across his face.

At some point they’d decided, by unspoken agreement, not to hate each other any longer. But this was still _wildly_ outside their range of friendship. It was entire galaxies away. It didn’t make one iota of sense.

“You want me to be your date?” Bellamy said, in a strange voice.

“Just for the night,” said Clarke, in a brisk, professional voice, like she was proposing a corporate merger or something. “As a plus one. I can’t go alone. Not after Finn, and not to _Lexa’s_ wedding. Not that I’m—I mean, it’s perfectly okay for a woman to be single. It’s not like that. I’m not ashamed. But I know these people. I know what they’ll be like if I show up alone.”

Bellamy rumpled his curls. He glanced away from her, as if searching the hallway for reinforcements, and then looked back at her. “Why me?”

“Because right now, I don’t feel like being around anyone I actually like.”

He let out a small, surprised sound that could have been a laugh. A wry smile curled his lips.

“And…the thing is…” She found she couldn’t look at his face. She focused instead on his bare feet poking out of the bottom of his grey sweatpants. “Frankly, I don’t know if I could survive the wedding on my own. I don’t know if I’ll be able to bear it.”

Saying the truth was like pulling teeth. It was such weakness, but she knew he’d never agree unless he understood just how difficult this was for her. Her cheeks burned. She wanted to grab the words and stuff them back down her throat.

“I…yeah. Okay then,” Bellamy said.

Clarke’s head snapped up. “You’ll come?”

“I guess.”

She let out her breath. She should have known. Bellamy was physically incapable of not rescuing people, and Clarke had practically shot a beacon into the sky.

Clarke steeled herself. “Here’s the thing, though. It’s sort of overnight.”

“ _Overnight?_ ”

“The wedding is three hours away at a big hotel in the city. So we’d have to drive there and…you know. Spend the night. I’d pay for your hotel room,” she added quickly. “And gas, if you want.”

Something tightened in his eyes, and his jaw set. “I can cover my own gas.”

“Right,” Clarke said. “Sorry. I know that.”

The silence was excruciating.

“Three hours?” Bellamy said finally. “Each way?”

“We can listen to _The Lost Hero_ on audiobook,” Clarke said tentatively. A peace offering.

He shook his head, but she glimpsed the edge of his smile. “You owe me big, princess.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“That’s a yes.”

He whole body sagged in relief.

It wasn’t until he’d already stepped into his room that she remembered herself.

“Thank you,” she called, before he could shut the door. “I mean it.”

She knew he was smiling, which made her smile. “Good night, Clarke.”

His door shut. She leaned in her own doorway for several moments, thinking about the stupid thing she’d just done. Part of her thought she would have been better off braving it alone.

They were going to a wedding. _Lexa’s_ wedding. And spending six hours in a car together.

 

#

This was a bad plan.

Bellamy knew it was. He should have said no. But Clarke had looked at him with such desperation—looked, for once, as if she were begging to be helped—and Bellamy hadn’t had a choice.

“You’re insane,” Raven had said every two hours since she’d been told of the bad plan. “One of you is going to end up throttled with the veil by the end.”

Six hours in a car with her.

 _Overnight_.

He took a steadying breath as he pulled off his shirt and poked his arms into the sleeves of a wrinkled button-down.

His nerves were jumping. He had that tight, apprehensive feeling in his chest that he usually associated with exams, but he was also, in spite of himself, wildly curious about Clarke’s ex. The great love of her life.

Who was marrying someone else.

That was a lot to unpack.

Bellamy ran a hand through his hanging shirts. His wardrobe was not up to the demands of this wedding. He’d never owned nice clothes—he didn’t own nice anything beside his car—and he’d definitely never been to a wedding as fancy as this. He’d stick out like the damn stable boy at a royal ball. Except this royal ball would be overflowing with Clarke’s royal friends from her old world. The princess was returning to her kingdom, and she’d see immediately how much he didn’t fit, with his borrowed clothes and untamable hair. (Raven had pinched one of Zeke’s suit jackets for Bellamy, because she was a life saver.)

He was just some foster kid with a juvie record and a wrinkle in his tie that he couldn’t flatten no matter what he did.

“Damn you,” he growled, yanking at the tie looped around his neck, but the wrinkle stayed wrinkled.

He twisted it and realized this was definitely not how you tied a tie. Shit. Surely he could figure this out without accidentally (or purposefully) strangling himself.

“Bellamy!” came Clarke’s voice from the hall. “Are you almost done in there?”

She’d been twitchy as a cat all day. For the last ten minutes he could hear her nervously pacing the house.

“Uh…” Bellamy tried flipping the thin end of the tie behind the thick part and just got the same, useless tangle. “Almost.”

“Come on, we’re running late!”

They were actually running stupidly early, but there was no use telling Clarke that. She was right outside his door now, and he could hear her foot tapping.

“I’m coming in,” she said, and the door swung open. “ _What_ is the holdup?”

Her eyes went immediately to the limp tie around his neck, and she blew out an exasperated breath.

“Okay, hold still.”

“They invented knocking for a reason, you know,” he said, and then stopped talking as she marched directly up to him and grabbed the ends of his tie.

Of course Clarke could tie a tie. Because she was Clarke, and she had probably taught herself at the age of six.

Not even a quarter of a Raven could fit between them. Their toes were nearly touching. Her heavily lashed eyes, spiky with mascara, were fixed intently on the movements of her hands. She looked…like a fucking bombshell, if he was finally being honest with himself. She looked like a weapon. She wore a cold blue dress that bared her arms and hugged every square inch of her. The color made her eyes as bright as gas flame.

 _Jesus_.

She smelled differently today, like something spicier and muskier that was making him fucking dizzy.

He tilted his head way up and away from her, fixing his gaze on the ceiling. Her knuckles grazed his throat, bumped his jaw, and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“The tie is tied.” She stepped away. He was saved from certain death. “It’s not so hard once you get the hang of it.”

He couldn’t even thank her. He followed her from the room, followed the musky scent she left behind, and realized his execution had only been postponed.

 

#

Bellamy slung their overnight bags into the trunk. The two of them piled into the front seats, Raven watching skeptically from the stoop. And then they were off.

Neither of them spoke as Bellamy drove out of their neighborhood and merged onto the highway. He seemed perfectly comfortable with silence, but Clarke felt the urge to fill it. Or at least suggest a desperate game of Twenty Questions.

She was not going to do that.

She watched his broad, tendon-y hands fiddle with the AC. It was a distracting sight. They were exactly the sort of hands she once would have loved to (attempt) to draw—Michelangelo study hands. All knuckles and shadow.

“Thanks again for doing this.” She winced at how inane the words sounded. She was really just speaking to speak. “It was nice of you.”

Bellamy raised his brows. “Not sure I’m a particularly nice person.”

“Even so. It’s the kind of thing that friends do for one other.”

The word hung so heavy in the air Clarke could practically see it.

“Friends,” said Bellamy carefully, “who don’t like each other.”

“That’s right.”

They exchanged half-smiles. She supposed, together, it would be one whole smile.

“Just remember you owe me,” Bellamy said.

“That’s also what friendship is. A mutual rescue contract.”

Bellamy looked at her sideways, which was very much not safe driving. “What was the phrase you used? Murder buddies?”

“Murder buddies. Wedding buddies. Not much difference.”

“Rescue buddies.”

“Sometimes you rescue with murder. Sometimes you rescue by putting on a tux and eating some cake.”

“Honestly,” Bellamy said, adjusting the mirror, “today, I’d take the murder.”

Clarke didn’t blame him, but it still made guilt flip her heart, realizing again what a ghastly thing she’d roped him into. “It’s probably _really_ good cake.”

“Better be.” But he was smiling again. He drove directly into the morning sun, and the light gilded the contours of his face. He looked like a painting again. She was not going to survive this trip if Bellamy Blake was going to sit there looking like a _painting_ the whole time.

Clarke was determined not to be weird about this.

Because they were out-loud, codified, canon _friends_. It made something warm and floaty rise up inside her like a fizzy-lifting drink. She could count on her fingers the number of friends she had, so to add one more to the roster…and not just any one, but Bellamy Blake, loyal and true, reckless and self-defeating, Raven’s favorite person, whom she’d come to rely on so much lately, a pillar of strength both literally and emotionally…

Clarke tended to lose the important people in her life. Her dad. Wells. Her strained long-distance relationship with her mother. The soul-crushing breakup with Lexa, which felt like it had taken everything soft inside of Clarke and fed it through a shredder.

“Do you want music?” Bellamy asked.

“Sure. You pick.”

Bellamy looked alarmed, like this was too much responsibility too fast. “I don’t know any of your music. I’ll pick something you hate.”

“I like things I hate,” Clarke said.

He _did_ pick something she didn’t recognize but definitely hated (it had a heavy beat and a lot of autotune), but she resolved not to complain and give it a chance. Apparently, she was really bad at first impressions. She could like it eventually.

Bellamy gave her a knowing, rather challenging look. “Opinion?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Right. That’s totally in character for you.”

“The reviews aren’t in yet,” said Clarke with dignity.

He laughed, as if she were joking, but the truth was simply that she didn’t want to say the wrong thing. This friendship was so new, so tenuous, that Clarke was afraid she was going to destroy it with one wrong word. The road ahead was so littered with booby traps it was like trying to navigate the Capitol with Katniss. She was terrified to trip one.

She relied on him. She needed him. She could not destroy this. She was determined to keep this intact. Whatever this was. This fragile, new… truce/friendship/ceasefire/armistice/murder pact.

That wasn’t a thing.

Besides, if she ruined said truce/friendship/ceasefire/armistice, she’d also destroy her friendship with Raven, not to mention their roomfriends situation. And nothing was worth that.

So Clarke let him play his bad music and didn’t even tease him about it. They lapsed into companionable, contemplative silence, broken by the occasional conversation, but Bellamy was very good at being silent, which Clarke found incredibly soothing. He was a moment of stillness in a hectic world. This long drive was a deep inhale before the plunge, and she found her nerves unwinding.

They stopped for coffee about forty-five minutes in, and then stopped again for sandwiches at the hour thirty mark. With every passing minute that they didn’t fight, and no one died, their moods lightened. As if they were so surprised that this was _working_ that they couldn’t help but celebrate.

This was the longest amount of time they’d spent together without the friend-glue that was Raven. Clarke had been sure they’d spin their wheels searching desperately for conversational topics, but instead Clarke was constantly curious about Bellamy’s opinion on things. She didn’t think she’d ever talked with anyone who was so different from her. He saw the world from a completely different angle. It wasn’t always an angle she agreed with, but forcing herself to shift over and peer at the world from his viewpoint made her reevaluate hers, and she got the wonderful, floaty feeling again when she realized Bellamy seemed to feel the same way about her. He was almost intensely curious about what she had to say.

That should not have been so novel.

But all too soon Bellamy was taking the highway exit into Polis, and the GPS was directing her through streets she recognized, and the butterflies in her stomach were more like rabid pterodactyls hammering against her ribs, and she couldn’t _breathe._

She was insane to come to Lexa’s wedding. She couldn’t do this.

No. She could do this. She just really didn’t _want_ to do this.

Bellamy cast her several measuring glances, but Clarke just grasped the sides of her seat and stared straight ahead.

He pulled into the church parking lot. It was, predictably, a very beautiful and modern church, cascading with flowers and surrounded by trees. This place had clearly been picked for the Instagram opportunities.

Bellamy parked. She opened the car door and stepped out on autopilot, her nerves so advanced she suspected she wasn’t actually inhabiting her own body.

“Should we…uh…” Bellamy squinted at the church, as if blinded by its Pinterest-y perfection.

“Let’s go, Clarke said. “I’ve got the invitation.”

Well-dressed people were congregating in the entrance. As she got closer, she noted a few of them note her, and her stomach churned with dread. She could practically hear the whispers, and saw several eyes go wide.

Her heels wobbled on the asphalt and she cursed her poor sartorial choices. Why had she chosen such high heels? Why had she chosen the tightest, sluttiest gown imaginable? She’d wanted to look good, but did she merely look— _cheap?_ Ex-girlfriend-cheap? Like the non-marrying kind, the girl you dated before the one you took to the altar? She imagined performing this walk alone and was divinely thankful for Bellamy’s presence. Thank god she had a date. At least there was that.

Bellamy’s voice cut into her whirlwind thoughts.

 “I never told you how good you look in that dress.”

“It’s not too tight?” Clarke anxiously smoothed the fabric clinging to her hips.

Bellamy seemed to struggle with himself. After a moment, he let out a strangled laugh. “No. No, it is _definitely_ not too tight.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what _that_ meant, but they’d reached the bottom of the steps. The guests at the top were trying hard to appear as if they weren’t watching Clarke, but she could sense their avid gazes like they were crosshairs.

“Well? Shall we?” Bellamy offered her his elbow, a smile curving through his cheek. His eyes were lit with amusement, crinkled at the corners, his hair disheveled but his shoulders neat and broad in the fine cut of his jacket. For a moment he looked like someone out of a novel, standing in the sunlight, arm out in a gentlemanly manner. The tie she’d tied that morning had loosened slightly, tugging open his collar to reveal a long line of throat.

Clarke gaped at him a little too long, and Bellamy’s smile faded. “That was weird, right, saying ‘shall’? People don’t say _shall_. Not anyone I know, at any rate. I figured these people would be shall people, but I probably just sound like an idiot.”

Clarke managed a real smile as the panic threatening to drown her subsided. “‘Shall’ is great. You were definitely pulling off ‘shall’.”

The reminder that Bellamy Blake-in-a-suit was so hot it was downright ostentatious was quite soothing to her nerves, actually. No one in that church could deny that walking in on his arm didn’t score her at least one ex-girlfriend point.

She took his elbow, resting her hand within the crook of his arm, and together they entered the church.

 

#

It was a hell of a church. (Were you allowed to say _hell_ in a church?)

Bellamy thought back to the poky, drafty chapel at his Catholic middle school. This place wasn’t even the same species. It was modern, all wood and sunlight, and the people inside it had an air of unreality about them. Their clothes weren’t wrinkled, and they looked well-rested. Was this what being rich was? Having the luxury to sleep and groom?

They were ushered to the Lexa side, and Clarke was very careful to seat them near the back. There were purple flowers everywhere. It smelled aggressive. Bellamy wasn’t sure he liked it. This whole thing looked like a movie wedding, the kind of wedding Bellamy hadn’t known people did in real life. These people had clearly spent more than his car was worth on this.

He glanced at Clarke, expecting her eyes to be popping at the sight of all this finery, but of course she wasn’t fazed. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling stupid and provincial. He didn’t belong here. He might have been sitting next to Clarke, so close their thighs brushed—Jesus _Christ_ —but there was a divide between them that was insurmountable. How could Clarke walk into a space like _this_ and not be bowled over? What had her childhood been _like?_ How could you look at six thousand dollars’ worth of floral arrangements and not even blink?

But then Bellamy looked more closely and realized Clarke was sitting way too rigidly, and her gaze wasn’t focused on anything. She’d gone into shutdown mode.

“—expect to see her here—”

“—Clarke Griffin, that’s right—”

Bellamy stiffened. He craned his neck to glare at the people two pews behind them, and the women abruptly stopped talking.

Clarke was fielding gazes from both sides of the aisle, and more than a few programs had been held up to block whispering mouths. He felt a prickle of irritation, and leaned protectively closer to Clarke. One gossiping guy met his eye. Bellamy stared back in a challenge, daring the dick to say another word.

The guy looked away. Bellamy smirked.

Thankfully, some very loud music started to play, and everyone moved their focus to the actual ceremony. It was…a lot. A fleet of bridesmaids in deep green (they looked like a bunch of mint leaves, frankly) paraded past, followed by some apple-cheeked kids in frilly dresses. Bellamy imagined trying to tug a young Octavia into one of those and bit back a smile.

Then the music swelled obnoxiously, which could only mean the arrival of the brides. Bellamy sat straighter in spite of himself. The first had long, wavy dark hair looped over one shoulder. This _had_ to be Lexa. Yeah—Clarke’s hands had just clenched. She was wearing something slinky and silky that showed off a lean figure. What kind of person was she, this girl who’d somehow earned Clarke’s guarded heart—and then broken it? Bellamy almost wanted to ask her how she’d managed to do it.

The other bride—who was a blonde, _ouch_ —had chosen the full, grand, movie star wedding dress. It was a mess of frills and had the circumference of a circus tent. It was a ridiculous thing, and Bellamy made a mental note to tell Clarke that once Clarke was done being a plank of wood.

He chanced another look at her. Her expression was cold and blank, her posture rigid. It was frightening how easily—and completely—Clarke could close herself off. Bellamy didn’t understand it. When he felt something, he felt it in every inch of himself. He didn’t know how to lock his heart up in a box and stow it under the bed.

Much as it disturbed him, he couldn’t honestly blame her as the ceremony commenced and it became abundantly clear that this was going to be a _disgustingly_ romantic enterprise. Very soon both the brides, and half the audience, were in tears. Their final kiss was not a chaste, churchly kiss, but a _kiss_ , and Clarke actually sucked in a breath.

Bellamy’s eyes cut to her, his brow creasing in concern, ready to do— _something_. But Clarke was stone again, and though Bellamy had lifted his hands involuntarily, there was nothing to catch.

Flower petals were tossed, people were clapping and cheering, and the laughing, aesthetically tear-stained brides hurried joyfully out into the sun. And it was over.

Thank the merciful lord.

Bellamy was sure he’d have to steer Clarke back to the Rover like a shopping cart. But the moment the people around them started to gather their things and ease to a stand, Clarke was up like a shot and marching toward the exit.

Bellamy hurriedly disentangled himself from the pew, climbed over two sets of knees, and ran to catch up. The look on her face worried the hell out of him. It was ferocious.

“Clarke—”

She kept going, blazing past the other guests, until they were back beside the Rover. He unlocked it, and she climbed inside.

He followed her. They sat in silence for several seconds. Bellamy wanted to say the right thing, but he didn’t know what that was.

“The cake better be damn good,” Bellamy said.

Clarke attempted a smile, but it was more of a pitying toothache-grimace.

“Look.” Bellamy shifted in his seat so he was facing her straight on, his forearm pressed to the wheel. He dropped his voice. “We can bail. I’ll leave with you right now if you want. No judgment, no questions. We’ll drive straight home. Just say the word.”

Clarke was quiet, a deep furrow in her forehead. He recognized the stubborn set of her jaw and knew her answer.

“No,” Clarke said. “Let’s go to the hotel.”

 

#

Clarke was in charge of checking in. She was back to efficient Clarke, brisk and practical, and in no time at all they were in the elevator (which was gold and mirrored and nicer than any elevator Bellamy had ever stood in) on the way to the nineteenth floor. Bellamy had never been on the nineteenth floor of anything.

“Here, this one’s you.” Clarke handed him a key card. “This is me, one door over. The reception is downstairs in Ballroom A. Feel free to change or freshen up if you like. I’ll see you then.”

She vanished into her room.

It took two tries for Bellamy to get the key card to work, and at least ten minutes to get used to the fact that this was his room. Forget the cake. _This_ was what made the whole mess worth it. The bed was vast, white, and inviting as a snowdrift. There was a minibar and a modern glass-enclosed shower with little bottles of product that Bellamy promptly stole. He wasn’t going to shower—he didn’t have anything to change into, and he didn’t dare untie his time—but he was going to Ross Geller the hell out of this hotel.

He thought of Clarke’s fingers brushing his throat. Her fingers pulling off the straps of her blue dress, one thin wall away, and then Clarke stepping into the glass shower and—

He shook his head, hard. No way. He was not going to ruin this by being attracted to her.

Yeah. He could finally admit it to himself: he was attracted to Clarke Griffin. Cataclysmically.

 _But let’s call a spade a spade_ , he thought, sinking into an armchair. _I don’t belong in a room like this, and she was born for rooms like this._

Besides, things had been almost _easy_ between them lately. Just thinking back to their camaraderie on the drive this morning made him smile. He needed that; nothing had been easy in his life in a hell of a long time. Not that Clarke was easy—far from it—but for clear moments like that, he felt like she was the only person who really looked at him and wanted to know what he was thinking. Who asked how he was feeling. The only person who asked because she already knew.

He was not going to ruin that by being a guy about it. No fucking way. Not for anything.

Even if he was definitely going to have interesting dreams about tight blue dresses for a long ass time. And God only knew what Dream Clarke would be doing with his tie.

“Get it together, Blake,” he muttered.

In two hours, they’d brave the party downstairs. Where, thank the lord, there would be expensive _alcohol_ , and lots of it.

 

#

It wasn’t something she thought often, but as Clarke stepped into the lavish Ballroom A, the first words in her mind were _Thank GOD there’s booze._

She couldn’t avoid the rest of the wedding guests now that they were serving dinner and forced to mingle. She gritted her teeth and smiled as people she used to know asked her how her art was going? Last they heard she was planning a show! Oh. Well, that’s a shame. And others who tilted their heads and asked how medical school was going. _Oh._ Art, is it? Not a lot of money in that, is there? Do you have any shows planned? _Oh._ Art history. I see.

Bellamy watched these conversations happen in open disbelief.

People asked in circles all around her mother. Two girls she used to go to high school with told her she was so _brave_ to be here, good for her, look at you looking so glammed up. Putting yourself out there!

One of the girls threw fluttery, hopeful eyes at Bellamy, who gave her such a furious, glowery, Blake-ish glare that the girls hastily left their table.

“I knew I brought you for a reason.”

“Yes.” Bellamy pointed a fork at the immense, glittering cake on the opposite side of the hall. “ _That_.”

He looked positively dashing. Clarke fully understood why that girl had gone so moon-eyed over him. She was feeling a bit moon-eyed herself. He was in a suit, and a tie, and he was gorgeous. And across the room, Lexa laughed and whispered in Costia’s ear, shining, in love, and she was _gorgeous_. Clarke was alone and single and cheat-on-able, and it was all just a big bisexual nightmare.

Which was why she was drinking.

This was not something she ever did, for obvious reasons. But man, if there was ever a time for liquid courage, it was now.

The cake was served (lemon and elderflower, sinfully good), the plates were cleared, and the band struck up. Lexa and Costia, hand in hand, made their way to the center of the floor for their very first dance.

Waiters were passing trays of champagne through the room, and Clarke grabbed one at once. And then at twice.

At first Bellamy seemed worried that she was drinking. Then, when she grew a bit tipsy (and started critiquing in an undertone the outfit of every person she knew), he became amused. But as Clarke tipped definitively into _drunk_ , he got that worried frown she knew so well.

Clarke knew she wasn’t a great drunk. It was another thing she’d inherited from her mother. She was not good at losing control. But she _wanted_ to be. So tonight she would try to be a delightful drunk, a fun drunk, a non-Clarke drunk. She’d changed into a dress the color of pale, shimmering gold, so she’d live up to it. She’d be sparkling wine inside and out.

Clarke chased after another champagne flute, but Bellamy caught her wrist.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite.”

He sighed. “Only you use words like ‘quite’ when you’re three sheets to the wind.”

“I’m not three sheets. I am one and a half at most. And you are _no_ sheets, which is no fun. Join me in fun!”

She couldn’t read his expression; there was too much there. “I don’t know. This isn’t like you.”

“Exactly!”

“Clarke…”

“Look.” They were close enough that Clarke had to tilt her chin to meet his gaze. “We both have things we’d like to forget. So let’s not be ourselves, for one night. Let’s not have responsibilities, or worries, or the entire weight of the world on our shoulders. Let’s be other people for just _one night_. Please?”

Clarke gazed up at him, and he gazed back, conflicted. She didn’t dare look away. She wanted him to understand. She wanted him to feel exactly what she felt.

Bellamy reached out and snagged a flute of champagne off a passing tray.

“Whatever the hell we want,” he said, and downed it in one.

Clarke couldn’t help it. She laughed, a full grin bursting across her face.

Bellamy actually fumbled the glass. It had clearly been such a long time since Clarke had laughed that she’d nearly shocked the wine out of his hand. That was embarrassing.

But no. Tonight, she was Laughing Clarke, not Cyborg Clarke, not Responsible Clarke, not Grown-up Clarke. Tonight she was someone else.

Four flutes later, Clarke discovered something delightful.

Bellamy was a smiley drunk.

He was smirk-y and smiley and full of bad jokes as they hung out next to the open bar (aka the best place to be).

“Quick quiz,” Bellamy said, “since I know you love quizzes. What part of this wedding would Raven hate the most?

“Besides our being drunk? And beside us coming together? And beside the fact that I stole her earrings?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy said, laughing, “besides all that.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes and searched the ballroom with all the focus she could muster (a surprising amount, given how much champagne was inside her). And then she found it.

“The speakers! The idiot band blocked their speakers!”

Bellamy toasted her. Raven was a notorious AV snob and was constantly criticizing the way “earless idiots” arrange their audio-visual systems. Clarke fumbled for her cell and snapped a pic to torture Raven with later.

“If she were here,” Bellamy said, “you know she’d be right up in their faces yelling.”

“And after twenty minutes of threats and insults, she’d win, and they’d unblock their speakers. And the whole wedding would rain praises upon her.”

They both grinned, looking over at the hapless band, whose speakers remained un-Ravened.

Next they found themselves hanging out next to the chocolate fountain (aka the _better_ place to be).

“You’re dipping fruit in the chocolate.” Bellamy shook his head. “There’s cake _right here_ , Clarke. Cake and marshmallows. And you’re dipping fruit.”

“I like fruit.” Clarke pulled about six strawberries onto her plate. “You’ve lived with Raven way too long, your diet’s turned to trash. Soon your rock-hard abs will be soft as cake.”

Bellamy looked fondly at the chocolate-soaked pound cake at the end of his fork. “It’s for a good cause.”

The music changed to something Clarke didn’t recognize, but Bellamy evidently did. His face lit up, which was enough to punt her heart like a football, and he put his plate on the buffet table.

“I love this song.”

“You do?” It sounded old school, forties or so, the kind Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald would have covered, waltz-y and classic. Instead of vocals, a warbly trumpet played the melody. Never in a thousand years would Clarke have pegged this song as a Bellamy Blake favorite.

“Yeah. My mom used to play it around the house. We should dance.”

“We should _what?_ ”

“Dance!” Bellamy took her hand, which she was thoroughly unprepared for, and tugged her away from the table. Clarke barely had time to set her own plate down.

“Bellamy—we couldn’t—” This song was pointedly romantic. The dance floor was choked with googly-eyed couples. So choked she couldn’t see Lexa and Costia, which was a blessing. “Do you even know how to dance?

Bellamy shrugged, still holding her hand. “I’ll pick it up. I’m a fast learner.”

Clarke thought of at least three extremely sexual comebacks and chose not to say any of them. She stopped walking, and Bellamy stood with one foot on the dance floor and one foot off, waiting for her.

He looked untroubled. Smiley. Like this wasn’t weird for him at all.

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe only _she_ was making it weird, and he just wanted to dance with his friend to a song he liked. Because they weren’t themselves tonight, weren’t roomfriends living balanced on the tip of a knife. If that were true, than this wasn’t dangerous at all.

“What about you?” Bellamy said, a teasing note in his voice. “Can you dance?”

Clarke hitched in a deep breath and matched his tone. “Of course I can dance. That’s the first thing they teach us in princess school.”

“They also teach you how to tie men’s ties in princess school?” He placed a hand on her hip, making her heart skitter. The fabric was so thin, it felt as if he were touching her directly. Like she could feel the grooves of his fingerprints marking her skin.

“No. I taught myself that one.”

Bellamy smirked, looking very pleased.

“What?” She slid her palm up his shoulder. He was close enough that she could see his every freckle, and the small shaving nick on his jaw.

“Nothing. Just won a bet with myself.”

“You huge loser.”

She took the first step. He managed to follow her lead fairly well. Actually, _really_ well. He was a natural.

“I’m not kidding,” Clarke said, slightly breathless. “I really did go to princess school. Five years of cotillion.”

“ _Why_.”

Clarke shrugged. “So we could waltz at each other’s weddings? Who knows.”

“S’pose I can’t complain,” he said, as Clarke deftly directed them through a spin. “You’re good.”

Warmth bloomed in Clarke’s chest. She bit her bottom lip, pinning back a smile, and ducked her gaze. “I used to get in trouble for leading. Apparently, princesses are supposed to let the men lead.”

“Doesn’t sound very princess-y to me.”

“That’s what I thought, and I let them know it. But apparently I gave the other girls _ideas_ , and one of the moms tried to ban me from cotillion.”

“Well, one bad apple can spoil the bunch.”

Clarke made a face. “I hate clichés.”

“You’re a lot of work, Clarke Griffin.” But he said it like a compliment.

His grasp was gentle. Somehow their hands shifted so that their fingers intertwined. The music swelled and her heart sped up to match it, making her cheeks glow. Bellamy was so close she could hear the rhythm of his breaths. She could feel it in his chest, inches away from hers, and the curve of his strong shoulder where her hand rested. It hurt to look at his face, like looking directly into the sun. But she found she couldn’t look away.

He was dizzyingly beautiful. Beautiful with an edge, like a gleaming knife with a handle as sharp as the blade. Beautiful to her in all the worst ways, so that looking at him—dancing with him—didn’t feel real. She wanted to chase this feeling to the horizon.

They weren’t really dancing anymore. The music had changed, but Clarke could barely hear it. Their hips brushed. She could see his pulse in his throat, and it struck her that nobody she knew was as vibrantly, defiantly alive as Bellamy.

She wanted to be alive like that.

Her hand slipped down from his shoulder, across his chest, and beneath his tie. She gripped firm hold of it and pulled ever so slightly. Bellamy let out a small, almost tortured sound.

Clarke’s heart beat hummingbird fast. She wasn’t even Clarke right now—this wasn’t something Clarke _did_ , but she felt brave, and stupid, and eager, and like sparkling wine all over. She wanted things she hated.

_Kiss me. Kiss me until I’m sick, and dizzy, and drunk on it. Kiss me like you hate me. Kiss me like I’m saving you._

_Kiss me like you’re saving me._

She saw his eyes darken. His breath caught. His lips parted. His fingers dug into her waist as if his hands had tightened by reflex, and he swallowed, his head dipping toward hers. She saw his body whisper _Yes_.

And a second later, she saw his reason answer _No._

He straightened. He unbraided their fingers and stepped away, pushing against her hip as leverage. His tie was the last thing to go, as it dropped from Clarke’s grip.

“I think we should call it a night,” he said, his voice rough with some feeling she couldn’t identify. “We—we’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

Clarke wanted to be as far away from this wedding, from his gaze, as possible. She wanted to teleport to Australia. Her whole body flushed hot with sick, churning embarrassment. She couldn’t even speak. Champagne was stupid juice, and she was _stupid. So incredibly stupid._

“Yeah. I. Yeah.” She knew her cheeks must a blazing, furious scarlet. Was she mad at him or herself? Both. Neither. “I’m gonna—go. See you.”

She was so uncomfortable she could barely make her legs work. It didn’t help that her heels were eleventy inches tall. So much for her mad escape to the Antipodes.

She pulled left her foot free of its pump, wobbled slightly, and then set the bare foot down. _Oh my god._ Bliss.

But Bellamy had the worried, chivalrous Gryffindor Quidditch Captain look on his face. “I’ll walk you up.”

 _We’re going to the same place_ , she nearly snapped, but Clarke found she couldn’t actually look at Bellamy anymore. She removed her other heel and slung both shoes over her shoulder, and they left.

The silence of the hallway and the lobby was a blessed relief to her eardrums, but it made her even more aware of Bellamy walking beside her, the rhythm of his steps, the careful distance he kept from her.

The silence in the elevator was thick. Clarke stared at their wibbly gold reflections in the doors. He was tall, and without her heels she was small. She was light, light hair, light dress, and he was a pillar of dark. He was scowling, and she…well, she was also scowling. So at least they had that. Clarke and Bellamy would always both be scowling.

Bellamy had smiled a lot tonight. She supposed that was over. They were back to themselves. Real life had intruded, the carriage was a pumpkin, and Clarke and Bellamy were back to the serious and responsible adults they were meant to be. Their reflections stood very straight. Their brows were lowered, eyes peering out at the world like they were the first line of defense in a great battle for survival.

Clarke was so tired of surviving. It was so hard.

And her feet fucking _hurt._

He led her all the way to the door of her room, which make Clarke angry for reasons she could not begin to fathom. The keycard flashed green, and she stomped inside.

Bellamy hesitated in the doorway, resting a hand on the door jamb. “Are you gonna be all right?”

“Of course I am, Bellamy. I am always all right.” Clarke threw her heels onto the bed and bent her arms to unzip the back of her bindingly tight dress.

Immediately she ran into a problem.

“Shit.” Clarke tugged fruitlessly at her hair, but it was most definitely stuck. She twisted around in the mirror that leaned against the wall and saw that she’d caught the ends in her zipper.

Exactly what she needed.

“Help me get free.” Clarke spun so that she faced the mirror and her back was to him.

“What?”

“Unzip me.”

His reflection’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth, struggled for several moments, and then shut it. “Uh… no.”

“Bellamy Blake,” she said, suddenly so furious and annoyed that she could barely contain it, “you would not have a _tie_ if it weren’t for me.”

“Fine,” Bellamy growled, and he strode directly behind her. She scowled up at him in the mirror. He scowled back.

Then he hesitated.

“Come _on,_ ” Clarke said.

Slowly, like he was handling live ammunition, he scooped up as much of her hair as he could, brushing it out of the way. His rough, warm fingers grazed the skin of her shoulder and the nape of her neck.

Her treacherous heart beat faster. A shiver ghosted down her bare arms.

Clarke watched his reflection. He stood a very careful distance back, his gaze averted. But still a tingle swept along her spine as he unzipped the dress, let out a breath, and said, “There. Done.”

His eyes met hers in the mirror.

She did not move.

The cold air kissed her bare back, and she could hear every slam and beat of her heart. She clutched her dress and held her breath.

Meeting his gaze made all her secrets slowly rise to the surface. His dark eyes pulled the truth out of her.

Raven always claimed Bellamy was the safest guy she knew. But right now he was all danger. He took a step closer without seeming to realize. His eyes were dark and starry, his pupils wide. She felt his breath stir her hair. She felt pulled toward him like a magnet. Her breath fogged the mirror glass.

Her heart beat so fast it was nearly escaping.

_Mis-take. Mis-take._

He was important to her. She had only just realized, and though she still didn’t understand _how_ , he was. He was a friend. Ish. Thing. Doing…whatever the hell this was would ruin everything. She’d lose him, because Clarke _lost_ people. That was what she did. Something toxic seeped out of her, destroying everyone in the vicinity (except Raven, who was apparently immune to radiation or something). And she was scared shitless. Clarke was Clarke again, the magic of the champagne and the dance floor wearing off, exposing her to the cold bare truth, which was that this was Not A Good Idea.

Definitively.

This was not how you survived. Allowing things like this to happen was _not how you survived._

_This was weakness._

And Raven would kill her.

His fingertips had just brushed the very ends of her hair when she broke away from him. She took a large step sideways and spun so that her exposed back was safely hidden and her arms were clasped to her chest like a shield.

“We’ve got an early start,” she said.

Clarke saw it register. His mouth twisted slightly, and he swallowed. After a second, he stepped back and nodded.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, in a flat voice, and turned to leave.

“Thank you.” The words escaped her just as he opened the door.

Bellamy paused. He didn’t turn back around, but she could just see the edge of his lips curl in an almost-smile.

“Good night,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

He hadn’t called her princess. He didn’t know if she was relieved or dismayed.

Clarke sat on the edge of her bed and stared sightlessly at the wallpaper. Her mind was full of a million things, but she couldn’t focus on anything.

They were friends. Her freshman year self would never have believed it. She no longer thought of him as the enemy, as a cocky, bullheaded, bruising boy with a hard jaw and flashing eyes. Now he was just Bellamy, and they were friends. Roommates. Roomfriends—which didn’t sound like a thing. Friends who sometimes went a bit gooey with one another, which was…unfortunate, but it was not too late. The hadn’t gone too far, and the gooey feelings could be…un-gooed. This was salvageable.

Some people simply had very intense friendships. She and Bellamy would be that kind. That was…reasonable.

If she was being truly smart, she’d stop it altogether. She’d go back to hating him, picking fights with him, sniping at him. Or she’d move out once and for all.

No. She couldn’t. Raven would REALLY kill her.

And she’d be so, incredibly, painfully lonely.

Who else did she really have, besides Bellamy and Raven? She needed them. Needed _him_.

She would dial it back. She had to.

Clarke groaned and fell against the comforter. It brought no comfort.

Why was she such a bisexual _disaster?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raise your hand if you’re also a Bisexual DisasterTM


End file.
